


\ 



THE JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 



IIIIIIIIIII ''^lllilllllf 




ill 



THE 



JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 



EDITED BY 

ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY 



PHILADELPHIA: 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO, 

C<9 






5k 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, by 

DERBY & JACKSON, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York- 



CONTENTS 



P1G1 

ERAS IN WOMAN'S LIFE. Translated from the German of Zschoxke, 9 

^ JOSEPHINE 49 

MADAME DE SEYIGNE. By Alexander H. Everett, 51 

MARIE LOUISE 86 

SUBURBAN ROMANCE. By Charles Dickens, .89 

\l CHARLOTTE CORD AY, 103 

THE FOUNTAIN VERY FAR DOWN. By Yirginia F. Townsend, . . Ill 

^MADAME ROLAND, 122 

"CATCH THE SUNSHINE." By Marion Harland, 124 

J MADAME TALLIEN, ' 152 

BERTRAM THE LDIE-BURNER. By Nathaniel Hawthorne, . . .154 

MADAME JUNOT. (Duchess D'Abrantes), .ISO 

A MULE RIDE LN MADEIRA. By Metta Yictoria Yictor, . . . .153 

^MADAME RECAMIER. 216 

PAUL PYNE, ACTOR AND GENTLEMAN. By T. B. Aldrich, . . .219 

PAULINE BONAPARTE, 228 

CAROLINE BONAPARTE, 230 

LOST ALICE 232 

MADAME DE STAEL, 256 

HORTENSE, 258 

PHANTOMS OF FONTALNEBLEATJ, 260 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

i TAGE 

M'LLE LENORMAND, 268 

MADAME JEROME BONAPARTE, 269 

THE LAST PICTURE, 271 

GRACE INGERSOLL, .277 

MADAME REGNAULT, 279 

GROWING OLD. By Miss Mulock, .281 

M'LLE GEORGES, e 286 



JOSEPHINE GALLERY 



ERAS IN" WOMAN'S LIFE. 

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF ZCHOCKE. 

My father formed at the University an intimate 
friendship with a young and very gifted man named 
Waldern. When they left the high school, the night 
before their separation, with tearful eyes they pledged 
each other over a glass of punch and swore to remain 
true to each other even to their last moments ; and 
whatever might be their future lot, if it were in any 
manner possible, they agreed to see each other every 
year. There have been many friendships sworn, and 
faith often pledged, over a glass of punch or wine, but 
people return to a more quiet state of mind — they look 
back upon youthful enthusiasm, and smile at it — they 
forget themselves. The times change, and men change 
with them. 



10 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

Yet it was different with my father and young Wal- 
dern. They kept their word and faith. They grew 
sober, but their hearts beat warmly, even in riper }^ears. 
Their paths in life were very distinct, but their souls 
always turned towards each other, notwithstanding the 
distance which separated them. They married, but 
they never forgot their brotherlike tenderness. Once 
every year they visited each other, notwithstanding 
they were separated by a three days' journey. And 
even when they each had the engagements of an office, 
and a family of children, they devoted two or three 
weeks to their annual visit, 

For several years, at first, the visits took place 
alternately at their different homes. Afterwards, it 
was usually my father who made the journey, and was 
entertained by his friends. I do not know how this 
happened ; but Waldern was rich by marriage and 
inheritance, dwelt in the city and held an office at court, 
which gave him a great deal of occupation ; these rea- 
sons might have kept him at home. My father held 
the office of head Forester in a village ; his house had 
no superfluous room for guests accustomed to luxury ; 
perhaps it was more pleasant for him to see, once a 
year, the varied bustle of the city, than for the courtier 
to inspect the woodcutting in a forest, or the table in 
a village ; for some reason, however, it came at last to be 
the custom for my father, every summer, to take a jour- 
ney and visit his friend. 

I might have been a boy of ten years old, when my 



ERAS IN WOMAN'S LIFE. II 

mother dressed me in new clothes from head to foot, 
and my father said, 

11 Gustavus, you shall go with me to the city, this 
time. My brother Waldern has long desired to see you." 

Who was so gay as I ! The mamma travelled with 
us this time. For a quarter of a year we looked for- 
wards to the journey. I was the only child remaining 
to my parents ; they enjoyed my childish anticipations 
of the wonders of the city. 

In fact, there was enough for me to see and hear in 
the city. It seemed to me like life in a fairy tale, every 
day something new. Waldern was an exceedingly 
agreeable man, but he had an only daughter, just 
as old as I was, named Augustina, who seemed to me 
much more agreeable than he was. She jumped and 
danced incessantly before me, and her first question 
was, " Gustavus, have you seen my new doll?' 7 Then 
she seized me by the arm, and I was obliged to admire 
the doll, whose splendid dresses, of which she had at 
least a dozen, were changed every day. I was also 
called to express my delight at the sight of the doll's 
furniture, her tables and chairs. The second day, how- 
ever, Augustina let the doll repose, and rambled with 
me about the grounds. She taught me to dance, and I 
taught her to play soldier in the garden, with flower- 
stalks for guns. We were never separated, and from 
morning till evening in an incessant frolic and play. 

" Listen, old friend," said Waldern, one evening, at 
supper, to my father j "we have charming children.' 1 



12 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

At these words 1 looked at Augustina, for I had not 
yet thought whether she were pretty or not. And to 
be sure her dark locks, confined only by a simple rose- 
colored band — the delicate oval of her fine face — the 
black, animated, roguish, good-humored eyes — her red 
plump lips — the graceful motions of her whole body — 
all appeared to me to be really pretty. 

" Papa/ 7 cried Augustina, with a face wonderfully 
between sour and sweet, "if I only had such pretty 
hair and eyes as Gustavus, you would certainly think I 
should do very well." 

" Old friend," continued Waldern, without suffering 
himself to be interrupted by the little vanity of Augus- 
tina, " our friendship must descend to our children, and 
they shall make a couple ; it is plain they are intended 
for each other." 

My father nodded smilingly, and raised his wine- 
glass. The old people touched glasses. I did not 
exactly understand what the chamberlain meant by the 
inheritance. But Augustina explained it by a question 
she put to her father : 

" Indeed, little papa," cried she, "do you mean 
that Gustavus shall be my husband ? Oh, that is 
most- charming. I shall certainly love him dearly. 
Oh, yes, papa, let it be so ; do you not like it, Gus- 
tavus ?" 

A loud laugh went round the table. The next day 
we played man and wife. We had a wedding, but be- 
fore that we had a betrothal. In the garden, which was 



ERAS IN WOMAN 7 S LIFE. 13 

bordered by grape-vines, we had our church between 
two acacia trees, which were then rare in Germany. A 
wooden garden bench was the altar ; a cousin of Augus- 
tina's, somewhat older than we were, who often came to 
play with us, was the priest. Augustina had arranged 
everything ; two pewter rings, set with green and red 
glass stones, had been purchased ; these were exchanged 
before the altar, and because on account of their large 
size they tumbled from our fingers, they had ribbon 
wound about them on the under side. 

After the wedding, we went to a wedding feast in a 
corner of the garden. Table and chairs were placed, 
sugar-plums of all kinds, cake and milk, were served up 
in a doll's tea-set by the bride herself. Everything 
went off bravely. After the feast, we had a dance, the 
cousin being musician. 

Yet why should all this childish nonsense be re- 
peated ? Three weeks passed away in the city like a 
dream to me. And when we separated, there was sor- 
row and crying between the husband and wife. We 
begged them not to separate us, but our parents con- 
soled us, laughed at our emotion, and at last took us 
from each other with the promise that we should soon 
have another visit. 

We did not go back again so soon to the city as I 
wished. At home everything seemed empty, dead, and 
solitary. For some time I wept in secret for Augustina. 
And even when I ceased to grieve, and became accus- 
tomed again to the quiet house of my parents, and the 



14 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

stillness or the village and the forest — for this soon hap- 
pened — all was not yet right in every corner. 

For this reason I was well pleased that a change 
took place. My father placed me at school in a neigh- 
boring city. I was delivered over to his acquaintance, 
the rector of the school — an old, worthy, learned man 
— as a pupil and a boarder. My mother wept bitterly 
when I went away from home. She packed my trunk 
closely with my clothes and books, but I found room 
enough to stow Augustina's pewter ring between the 
folds of a handkerchief. My good mother herself first 
carefully wrapped it up in paper. 

A life of study with the rector was not at first 
altogether pleasant to me, but I soon came to like the 
bustle of the boys in school. Multiplication, division, 
conjugations, definitions, extemporizing, all now went 
briskly along, and time went along with it. As the 
city where my education was conducted was only three 
miles from my native village, I was often at home. 
This was always a high festival for me, for I could only 
be there a day at a time. Oh, maternal love ! oh, 
heart of a father ! How unspeakably happy was I 
every time I returned to the scene of my youthful 
sports. 

The rector, my master, was an excellent man ; I 
loved him like a second father. His learning made 
him seem to me like a superior being. He had not 
much intercourse with the inhabitants of his little city. 
He delighted rather to live with the exalted spirits 



ERAS IN WOMAN'S LIFE. 15 

of other days, and with his youthful pupils; "for," 
said he, " there I see the perfected, and you bear 
in your hearts the seeds of perfection. Many of you 
will deceive my hopes ; yet I hope by some to work 
in the world, when I no longer breathe under the 
heavens." 

I now approached through the porch of the gram- 
mar into the holy of holies of ancient wisdom. How 
did Homer and Curtius excite me, but above all others, 
Plutarch. I could have wept over the great world of 
the past. How merciful seemed to me the men of our 
own times, still, in fact, barbarians on whom may be 
seen the scars of the strong hand, of slavery, and the 
dust of the people's wanderings. I read. I translated, I 
wrote verses, I was happy, as knowledge makes every 
young man. 

I had nothing to do with the journeys to the city, 
though my father regularly made his visits there, in 
conformity to his old customs. I no longer sighed after 
it ; I had altogether forgotten my little wife there. 
I should have lost her little pewter ring, if I had not 
put it aside with some other toys in a. little bag, where 
it lay undisturbed for years. My vacations I usually 
spent at home, in company with some of my fellow- 
students, or made journeys to visit them at theirs. 

Thus the years passed away. In my nineteenth, the 
rector considered me prepared for the University, and 
my father sent me there. It was a bitter parting, for 
T was unwilling to leave the worthy man, who, in 



16 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

forming my mind, had laid the foundation of all my 
inward happiness. Still more unwillingly did I bid 
adieu to the neighboring home of my father, from 
which I should now be fourteen miles distant. Now, 
everything which I had prized and loved as a child, 
became more dear. I visited again all the scenes of 
my sports ; and as I was one day packing up for my 
journey, I did not neglect the little bag containing my 
playthings. I took out the smallest articles, as memo- 
rials and relics of my departed childhood, and laid them 
near Homer and Horace in my trunk. Augustina's 
pewter ring was among them. 

Notwithstanding I made verses in which the moon 
above and tender love, the young heart gay, the sun's 
bright ray, hearts and smarts, figured largely, yet of 
the ring of the little maiden and the city, I retained no 
distinct impression. I looked rather for the eyes of 
modest virgins, on which I could honorably pay a cou- 
ple of Petrarchian sonnets ; but this I did with fear 
and trembling. And I cannot say that any one pair of 
the many eyes, whose lightning glance I often met, 
ever inspired me to write an ode. And yet, among 
the Pandects, and Institutions, and other forms of 
science with which I was surrounded, because niy 
father desired to see me a head forester, my mind still 
sighed for something. I did not know what it was, but 
I did not find it. 

I had advanced so far, during the three years which 
I had passed at the University, that I was able to 



ERAS IN WOMAN'S LIFE. 17 

become Doctor utriusque juris. I was advised, after 
having taken my decree, to apply for a professorship, 
and give private lectures. But my father, as head 
forester, considered no office in the State so honorable 
as a forest counsellor ; and through the influence of 
the chamberlain, Waldern, I was established as Refen- 
darius in a provincial city. 

Before I went to my post, I wished to visit my 
parents. I had been to see them once a year, during 
all the time which I had passed at the University. 
My father wrote to me to meet him in the city, where 
he and my mother were going to visit our old friend 
Waldern. I had some farther directions respecting my 
office to receive from the latter. 

I hastened thither, in compliance with these. direc- 
tions. On the journey I thought sometimes of Augus- 
tina, but always with aversion, as if I were ashamed of 
our childish jests. Meanwhile, thought I, she must be 
pretty well grown, and perhaps she is still handsome. 
But the thought was odious to me, that our parents 
would perhaps make a serious matter of these jests, 
and might couple us together in earnest. It seemed to 
me this meeting had been contrived for no other pur- 
pose. I took a mental oath that this never should be. 

And I kept my oath, but certainly against my will. 
For, after the first hearty embraces on entering Wal- 
dern's house, I looked round the apartment, and there, 
landing ready to salute every one, was a young lady, 
beautiful as a Hebe, with black, piercing eyes, into 



18 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

which I could no more look than into the noonday sun, 
without incurring the danger of being struck blind. 
Ah, I was already blind ; I only saw that she saluted 
me with a bow ana with blushing cheeks. What I re- 
plied to this I do not know. I wished myself a thousand 
miles ofT, that I might collect my thoughts ; and yet I 
should hive rather died than have gone away. 

I W3/* fortunately relieved from my embarrassment 
by the embraces and questions of my parents and 
their fr'ends. I was obliged to answer, and thus by 
degrees recovered my self-possession. I heard Mr. 
Waldern say to the charming unknown, "Augustina, 
is supper ready ?" Alas, thought I, is that indeed 
Augustina ? I had not courage to believe that this 
unearthly creature was once, in times past, my little 
wife. Such a thought seemed almost blasphemous. 

We went into the supper-room. Mr. Waldern 
offered my mother his arm, ny father his to Madame 
Waldern — Augustina remained for me. I tremblingly 
advanced to give her mine. She had better have 
offered me hers, for certainly I needed a support. 

" How you have grown," said she. " I should never 
have known you." 

"And I — and I"- stammered I. "I wish we 

were still little." This I said in all sadness. It was the 
silliest thing I could have thought of, for what girl of 
nineteen would wish to be a little miss again ? 

"Indeed! why do you wish that?" said she, m 
astonishment. 



ERAS IN WOMAN'S LIFE. 19 

" Then I was so happy ! oh, happy as now I shall 
never dare to be." Here a sigh burst from me, and I 
touched my left hand to her right, which was lying on 
my arm. Augustina remained an answer in my debt. 
Perhaps I had again said something foolish. I was 
ashamed of myself. 

At supper the company were gay and lively. I be- 
came accustomed to Augustina ? s glances. I could even 
give her a reasonable answer, but eating was, in spite 
of all reason, entirely out of the question. The more I 
looked, the more beautiful she seemed. The next day 
she seemed still more so ; and the third, still more. 
It was manifest witchcraft. I repented my oath, which 
I had far too hastily made, in the postchaise, on my 
journey, and resolved, without hesitation, to become 
perjured at some future time. 

On the evening of the third day it happened, I 
know not how, that we found ourselves together in the 
garden. I had for some time desired to say something 
to her, but did not exactly know what it should be. 
We reached the grape-vine walk. I remembered it 
well. "Oh, how large the two young acacias have 
grown/' said I ; " their branches now meet." 

"Do you still remember these trees ?" said Augus- 
tina, timidly. 

" Could I forget my happiness ?" said I. " Oh, how 
often have my thoughts been here ! Ah, you were often 
in this walk, I suppose, without thinking of your little 
Gustavus, who shed so many tears in parting from you." 



20 JOSEPHINE, GALLERY. 

"How do you know that?" said she, with a gentle, 
sinking voice. 

We entered into the grape-vine walk ; it was 
darkened by the shade of the acacias. I looked about 
me. All the world of my youth revived within me. 
I looked silently at Augustina. Ah, how different was 
everything now ! Her eyes sunk to the ground. I 
took her hand. " Here was once the church." 

She pointed to the green garden bench, and lisped, 
" There the altar ; I know it all." 

" Actually all ?" said I ; " Ah, Augustina, all ?" 

" Oh, Gustavus I" stammered she. 

After a moment I drew out the pewter ring of 
betrothal. " Do you remember this, Augustina?" 

When she saw it, her countenance brightened. She 
took it, looked long at it, and her eyes grew moist. 
"It is the same," said she, and examined it again with 
extreme emotion. " Oh, Gustavus, you are better than 
I am." When she became more calm, she drew a gold 
ring from her finger, placed it on my hand, and put the 
pewter one on her own. "This I keep. I am thine 
forever ; art thou also mine, Gustavus ?" 

It will be understood that I answered as a poet of 
the age of twenty can answer. We swore by sun, moon, 
and stars, by the upper and the lower world, to love 
each other and belong to each other, on this side and 
the other side of the grave. Yet why should I relate 
all this circumstantially ? Every one knows the use 
lovers make of time and eternity, heaven and earth. 



ERAS IN WOMAN'S LIFE. 21 

Love placed the Paradise of Adam and Eve about us. 
Three weeks passed away in innocence and bliss like a 
summer's dream. Then the talk was of parting. G-ood 
heavens ! it seemed to me that I had but just arrived ! 

I wondered at the inattention of our parents. They 
might have seen what was passing between us. Our 
looks, our actions, everything betrayed that we were 
now going over in earnest what we had played ten 
years before. And yet the Director Waldern never said 
at supper what he said ten years before : ' ' Old friend, 
our children must inherit our friendship ; we must 
make a couple of them." 

With Augustina I had never the courage to speak 
of a formal engagement with our parents — of promise 
of marriage — of legal betrothal — a wedding, and such 
prosaic accidents of true love, which are demanded by 
common souls ; this was all too little, too profane for us. 
We supposed our parents had settled all such business 
between themselves. 

Meantime the parting hour came, which we had 
dreaded for three days before. My. father could be 
urged to stay no longer. The morning of my depar- 
ture, we two lovers, before sunrise, were in the dear 
grape-walk, to speak to each other once more alone, 
and explain all our feelings. With tears and vows the 
holy union was renewed. The vine-walk was actually 
changed to the church, the bench to the altar. We fell 
despairingly upon our knees, and stretched our hands 
in prayer to heaven, and made the most solemn pro- 



22 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

mises. I assured Augustina that, as soon as I reached 
home I would speak to my father, and then, returning 
to the city would receive from her parents her hand. 
Augustina blushed crimson when I called her my bride, 
my future wife. She hid her face in my bosom, and 
stammered, " Only Gustavus." 

Thus we separated. 

I had no sooner reached our village with my 
parents, than I seized the first opportunity to speak 
with my father alone, and reveal to him all my wishes 
and hopes of happiness. He, as well as my mother, 
had, during our journey, joked with me upon Augus- 
tina's conquest, when I had been lost in reveries. This 
gave me occasion for confession. 

My father, a very sensible and upright man, and a 
tender parent, listened to me quietly and patiently ; and 
patience he certainly needed, for I talked to him a 
whole hour, that I might explain to him the inviolable 
vow Augustina and I had made to each other. 

"Child," said he, "I have nothing against it. 1 
honor the feelings of both of you. I am glad you and 
Augustina love each other. The thought of her will 
guard you from many wrong thoughts and feelings. Yet 
I advise you not to be too hasty at this time. You are 
still young, hardly more than two and twenty. You 
have yet no office which will give you a support. But 
this is necessary before marriage. Augustina is rich, to 
be sure, but you would not be supported by your wife. 
Nothing is mere dishonorable than for a man to make 



ERAS IN WOMAN'S LIFE. 23 

himself dependent upon the property of a wife, and 
have to thank her for a fortune. The husband should 
be a man, and, by his wealth and his labors, support his 
wife and children. I, myself, from my office of forester, 
derive but a moderate income. I can only give or 
leave you a small property. You must first labor for 
yourself, as I have labored for myself. 

"These circumstances may perhaps have the effect 
of causing my friend Waldern to refuse you, at least for 
the present, the hand of Augustina. She, brought up 
in the bosom of luxury, is accustomed to certain conve- 
niences that have become necessaries to her. You are 
not in a condition to provide her with these necessaries. 
Yet another circumstance is added to all these. The 
ages of both of you are not favorable for a long con- 
tinued happy marriage. Augustina is about as old as 
you are. This is not well. Woman comes to maturity 
earlier, but she fades also earlier than man. You 
would be unhappy to have an old wife, when you are 
still in the fullness of your manly strength. Between 
a man and a woman of the same age there is always a 
difference of at least ten years." 

In this manner spoke my father. Every one will 
perceive that he was manifestly wrong. I proved it to 
to him as clear as the sun, and was very much aston- 
ished that he did not admit the force of my reasoning. 
I appealed to my mother. 

" Gustavus, you are right," said she, "I must own 
you are right. Augustina is an angel ; I do not wish 



24 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

for a better daughter-in-law. But your father is right, 
too. I can advise you to do nothing better than he has 
done. God help you," said she, weeping and tenderly 
kissing me. 

We had now daily conversations and consultations. 
We never came to any conclusion. I suffered un- 
speakably in silence. After a week or two, when I 
was making preparations to begin my journey to the 
city, and from there to the little town where I was to 
shine as refendary, a letter came from Mr. Waldern to 
my father. Mr. Waldern's letter was full of complaints 
and lamentations about Augustina, who, after my de- 
parture, was inconsolable, and was obliged to take to 
her bed with a fever. She had now become more tran- 
quil. But he adjured me now, that I had no possession 
by which I could, without making myself ridiculous, 
think of making a serious engagement with his daugh- 
ter, not to visit the city again. I should only, by doing 
so, fruitlessly renew her sorrow and endanger her health. 
He repeated to me what he had already said to his 
daughter, that he did not object at all to our union, if I 
were in any office which would afford me a considerable 
income, and which I could not fail to be in, in a few 
years. Still further, he had no objection to my keeping 
up a correspondence with Augustina, to make up for 
our separation, if I wished it. 

This letter at first entirely overpowered me. I 
raved and raged against the tyranny and cruelty of 
men, till from fatigue I became quiet. I then began to 



ERAS IN WOMAN'S LIFE. 25 

think that Waldern had written very sensibly, and had 
promised me more than, from what my parents had said 
to me, I had a right to expect. The letter gave me, 
even, a sort of triumph over my father. I blessed Wal- 
dern. I resolved to act like a man, and to win the hand 
of Augustina by my exertions. The permission to cor- 
respond by letter, I availed myself of at once. I 
wrote Augustina a letter three pages long, and a short 
one to Mr. Waldern filled with my grateful emotions. 

Waldern had worldly wisdom. He knew the human 
heart, and did not strive to dam up the violent stream 
of youthful inclination. The stream would only have 
become more furious and powerful and- destructive. 
Now it flowed more quietly. 

I did not journey towards the city, but went to the 
place where, as refendary, I was to enter the course 
which was to lead me to an office of more profit and 
trust. The parting from my dear parents, the diver- 
sions of the journey, the first entrance into my new 
abode, and the beginning of the business of my office, 
had no small effect in bringing me to a more tranquil 
state of mind. 

I labored with the most untiring diligence to per- 
form, in the most perfect manner, the duties of my 
calling. My exertions were noticed. Every one did 
honor to my knowledge of business. I had but one 
fault, I was too young. I must first reach the annum 
canonicum. Oh, how I sighed for my five-and-twentieth 
vear. 



26 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

At last I reached it. One lives up to any age if he 
does not die first ! But there was sorrow here. My 
good mother died at that time, and a few months after 
liei my father also. Yet my father had the pleasure, 
before his death, of seeing me assessor in a provincial 
college, with the title of counsellor, and endowed with 
a small salary. A great step towards the summit of 
my wishes, the hand of Augustina. 

My correspondence with my beloved was in a good 
way. To be sure, during the first years we never wrote 
a letter which was not three pages long. In the course 
of the second year, we cut off at least half ; and by the 
third, it was reduced to a single page. Time does won- 
ders, but it does not extinguish true love* Augustina 
had, in the meantime, refused several young men who 
had paid their addresses to her. My letters were 
generally filled with regrets that I was not yet in a 
situation to ask her hand. My present salary was 
barely sufficient for my own personal expenses. The 
little inheritance from my father was nearly expended. 
She on her part assured me her parents were daily 
becoming more and more desirous she should accept 
some of the proposals of marriage which were made 
her, because she would soon have reached a certain age, 
when she would not be in so much demand, and would 
be called an old maid. 

I felt that her parents were right ; and my under- 
standing with Augustina being clear, I forgot the 
former proposal, and wrote to Mr. Waldern with regard 



ERAS IN WOMAN'S LIFE. 27 

to Augustina, that, though I was not yet able to sup- 
port a wife, yet I was consoled by the brightest hopes. 
This consolation did not go far with Waldern. He, in 
the meantime, refused again to give me Augustina, 
and gave me to understand that I made his daugh- 
ter unhappy by these useless negotiations, since she was 
now in the middle of the twenties, and was advancing 
with a quick step towards the thirties. 

On receiving this letter, I sighed sorrowfully. " The 
man is right, perfectly right, " said I ; and I was mag- 
nanimous enough to acknowledge this to Augustina her- 
self. I wrote to her, that, as I could not see with any 
certainty the time when I could with propriety ask for 
her hand, she should not sacrifice her best years for me. 
I should not love her less, even if she were the wife of 
another ; and my happiness would be increased, if I 
only knew she were more happy. 

This gave materials for a correspondence that lasted 
for nearly a year, and in which the same circumstances 
were considered on all sides. We wished to exceed each 
other in love and generosity. But at last I gained the 
victory, or rather Time, the wonder-worker, gained it, 
for Augustina was already six-and-twenty years old, a 
fatal period for maidens who would not increase the 
number of the eleven thousand in heaven. 

However, very unexpectedly I received a letter from 
the city in an unknown hand. A counsellor of justice, 
Yon Winter, thanked me in the tenderest and most 
feeling manner for my magnanimity, for Augustina was 



28 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

now his wedded wife. He begged for my friendship, 
and Augustina herself added a few pretty lines to the 
letter of her "dear husband,' 7 as she called him. 

When I read this, it seemed as if I had fallen from 
the clouds. I cursed my untimely magnanimity, and 
Augustina's faithlessness. But what was to be done ? 
Augustina was six-and-twenty years old. She was not 
altogether in the wrong. Notwithstanding, I was filled 
with extreme vexation on her account, which was 
increased when, a year after, her father died, by which 
event she arrived at free power over her hand and 
wealth. If she had only waited one year longer. Now 
it was all too late. I wrote not another line to her, nor 
she to me. We became to each other as if we had never 
met. 

Partly in revenge and retaliation for Augustina's 
faithlessness, partly to amuse my mind, I looked about 
among the daughters of the land. Lovely roses were 
blooming there ; willingly would I have gathered one of 
them, but alas the money ! 

Fortune now favored me. I was in a better place, 
in another city. Some of my labors drew the attention 
of the minister of state. I was employed in several 
important causes, and the success of these operated in 
such a manner, that when I had reached my thirtieth 
year, I received the honorable appointment of president 
of the criminal court, in the province in which I had 
until now been laboring. I had, besides the honor, a 
liberal salary — was able to keep house handsomely — 



ERAS IN WOMAN'S LIFE, 29 

visited the best families in the neighborhood, even 
where there were grown up daughters. 

Thoughts of the city sometimes drove the blood to 
my cheeks, though I imagined I had forgotten Augus- 
tina, or I should rather say Madame Yon Winter. As 
far as I could hear from travellers, her husband was a 
somewhat old gentleman, of noble family ; and the gra- 
cious lady lived, as they say in the court cities, upon the 
court footing, surrounded by admirers, every day en- 
gaged in parties of the nobility, pic-nics, rondos, assem- 
blies, ridottos, concerts, etc. The old simplicity of her 
father's house was gone. I was grieved when I heard 
these things. I could not accustom myself to think of 
the good, the celestial Augustina as so employed. 
Sometimes I could not but think, " Thank God, that she 
is not my wife." 

A second letter from the minister of justice made it 
necessary for me to take a journey to the city, which I 
had not visited for many years. I was received by the 
minister, and even by the monarch, in the most flatter- 
ing manner. I had been three days in the city, without 
having found a moment in which I could visit Augus- 
tina, although I had intended it. One morning I re- 
ceived the following note : 

"My dearest Mr. President — 

" Must your old friend learn first from the 
papers that you are here? Under fear of my dis- 
pleasure, I command you to come this evening and sup 



30 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

with me, in company with some good friends. Do not 
fail, 

" Yours, attached, 

" A. Yon Winter." 

Natural enough ! who would fail ? But yet the tone 
in which she asked me, did not exactly please me. I 
h^d imagined her first address very differently, for there 
had come over me a peculiar anxiety and fear when I, 
on the previous days, had thought, " I must go and see 
her." The separation for so many years, the various 
succeeding events in this interval of time, the old pas- 
sion, and since then the changes between us two ; these 
ideas all filled me with peculiar and, I may say, contra- 
dictory emotions, which made me dread the first meet- 
ing with my former love. 

With a violent heart-beating I entered the coach, 
and alighted before the old Waldern house, now the 
house of Winter. Over the door I saw the coat of arms 
of a nobleman cut in the stone. Within, everything 
was new and elegant, so much so that I hardly knew 
myself there ; but two quick-footed servants, in pale 
green and gold livery, conducted me in the right direc- 
tion, up the broad staircase, and into a spacious saloon 
filled with company. 

The lady of the house, the gracious lady, received 
me standing at the entrance of the apartment. It was 
Augustina — yes, it was she ; and yet it was not exactly 
herself. Certainly not the fresh beauty of a girl of 



ERAS IN WOMAN'S LIFE. 31 

nineteen ; but yet she was charming as a woman of 
thirty — full, majestic, easy. I could scarcely stammer out 
a word or two, I was so surprised, so bewildered. Her 
eyes, too, her blushes, told me of her quickened emo- 
tions. But she was so entirely her own mistress, so 
self-possessed, that she saluted me in the most agree- 
able manner possible, drew me from my embarrassment, 
reproved me sportively for having neglected an old 
acquaintance for so long a time, and taking me by the 
hand led me to the company, and presented me as a 
good friend whom she had not seen for ten years. 

I soon recovered myself in the confusion of a gene- 
ral sprightly conversation. The lady of the house must 
do the honors of the house. She was equally kind, 
pleasant and amiable to all. As she came again for a 
moment near me, she said — 

II How long do we have the pleasure, Mr. President, 
of keeping you in our city ?" 

And meeting me afterward again, " Excellent, my 
dearest, I tell you once for all, I expect you here every 
day, and appoint you for the whole time of your stay 
my Cavalier e servcnte." 

I now made my request to her to present me to her 
husband. " Indeed," cried she, " I cannot tell you 
where he is ; I believe, however, he is on a party in 
the country, with the royal master of the hunt. Apro- 
pos," added she, " are you married?" 

The evening passed away. There was no opportu- 
nity for any confidential conversation with Augustina 



3^5 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

We danced, we feasted ; wit and folly reigned, and 
pomp and elegance dazzled. 

I had, the next day, the happiness of seeing the 
husband of Augustina. The counsellor of justice was a 
man over fifty, very fine, very polite, nice, but sickly, 
feeble, and meagre in his appearance. " Not so, my 
brave sir/ 7 said Augustina once in passing me. " You 
look very proud near my dog of a husband, and think 
to humble my taste a little, but I assure you, on my 
honor, he is, after all, a very good sort of a per- 
son." 

The tone of the house did not please me, and 
nothing but the urgency of Augustina that I would be 
at all her parties, as much as my business would allow 
me, could have moved me to go there. She did not 
please me ; and yet I found her so amiable, her lively 
manner, her grace, her wit, drew me there again, often 
when old recollections and a comparison of the present 
with the past would have held me back. I even felt she 
might be dangerous to me, in spite of her levity and 
her fashionable airs. 

"But are you indeed happy, my gracious lady?" 
said I to her, one evening, when I at last sat alone with 
her in her box at the opera. 

" What do you call happy ?" replied she. 

I took her hand, pressed it affectionately, and said, 
*' I call that happiness which you once gave my heart. 
Are you happy V 1 

"Do you doubt it, Mr. President V 9 



ERAS IN WOMAN'S LIFE. 33 

" Then I am happy, if you speak truly." 

" Speak truly? So, my little President, you are 
still the same old enthusiast. It befits you very well. 
But do not forget that an opera box is not a confes- 
sional. To tell you what you want to hear, we must be 
by ourselves. Visit me to-morrow morning, at break- 
fast. 77 

I pressed her hand in gratitude. After the opera, 
we went together to the house of a friend of Augus- 
tina, a lady of the court, to join a supper party. 

The next morning I was at her house at eight 
o'clock. The gracious lady was still asleep. At ten I 
was admitted. She was in a morning dress, but only 
the more lovely for that. Now came the confession, as 
she called it. I learned that when one has passed the 
sentimental season of girlhood, she must seek her hap- 
piness in solid things. She was very well contented 
with her husband, because he was reasonable enough 
to leave her undisturbed to her own occupations. The 
old-fashioned ideas which we have in our childish years, 
vanish when our understanding comes. To be sure, she 
could not deny that she had not by any means loved, 
her husband as she had loved me ; and she added, with 
a roguish smile, " old love does not rust. I like you 
still very well, but believe me, I had rather have you foi 
a lover than a husband." 

I had much to say in contradiction of this, but she 
answered it all with laughter. Meantime her woman 
came and announced that breakfast was ready. She 

3 



34 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

took my arm, and we went into the well-known 
garden. 

Ah, the dear garden, I no longer recognized it. 
The old flower beds were gone ; instead of them there 
were clumps of foreign shrubs and trees arranged after 
the so-called English taste, between green grass plats, 
single paths wound about them. The vine bower was 
changed into a close Chinese temple, shaded by the two 
acacias. We entered it. It was the prettiest boudoir 
in the world. Instead of the green wooden bench, a 
well-stuffed mahogany sofa offered us a seat before a 
japan table, on which was placed coffee, chocolate and 
sweetmeats. 

" Oh, the beautiful holy vine bower, our church, our 
altar, our childish blessedness, oh, where is it all ?" sighed 
I, and gave a glance to Augustina, filled with sad reproach. 

11 Does happiness, then, depend upon the vine bower, " 
said she, smiling. " I suppose, for the same reason, I 
am not half so dear to you as I was ten years ago, be- 
cause I no longer wear the same dress." 

" But, Augustina — yes I must call you so once more, 
and this place gives me the right — have not certain 
memorials of those divine moments always remained 
with you ? For example, see here your gold ring, 
which, ten years since, you placed upon my finger. I 
have constantly worn it since as a holy treasure. 

" And I, to honor you, also., at least at breakfast to- 
day, have the well known pewter ring," said Augustina, 
and she held her hand before my face. " Tou see it has 



ERAS IN WOMAN'S LIFE. 35 

turned black, and yet I place it in my jewel case, a 
jewel among jewels.' 7 

As I looked at the ring, a bitter feeling came over 
me. I took her beautiful hand, which the ring made 
more beautiful, and impressed upon it a kiss of gratitude 
Augustina withdrew her hand, and said, 

"G-ustavus, you are still the same impatient enthu- 
siast ; it is not well for you to be near me. With you 
I might perhaps have been happier." 

After we had breakfasted, we left the Chinese tem- 
ple, while she held up her finger with a threatening air, 
and said, 

" Ah, Mr. President, it is not well to confess to you." 

She then resumed her usual sportive manner of con- 
versing, and reminded me of the hour when I should 
meet her at a ball in the evening. 

Though I remained fourteen days longer in the city, 
I had no farther opportunity to see Augustina alone, 
perhaps because I avoided any. Notwithstanding, from 
the moment I left the Chinese temple, I felt the last 
spark of love extinguished in my breast. I could not 
conceal from myself that there might be danger in our 
meeting in this way. The time of my departure came. 
Oh, how different the parting from that of ten years ago ! 
We separated with drums and trumpets, at a ridotto, 
which I left early, because I was to set out on my jour- 
ney the next day. We had waltzed with each other, 
and said many pretty things. She accompanied me 
to the door, and called after me an adieu raon ami, 



36 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

while she was reaching her hand to another partner in 
the dance. 

I was glad at heart to fly from the wearisome bus- 
tle of the great world, and belong again to myself. I 
mused at my ease over what was to be my future 
life, as I travelled through fields and forests, through 
cities and villages. I mused upon the future — the 
past with Augustina had become painful to me. Oh, 
how time had changed everything ! My journey — I 
was four days in reaching my home — was somewhat 
tedious, for it was without any adventure. The last 
day I met with one of a very pleasing kind. 

My servant stopped in the morning, in a village, 
before an inn, to feed his horses. I went into the 
house, and heard the sound of quarrelling. The host 
and a half-drunken hired coachman, whose carriage was 
before the door, were disputing. A young, well-dressed 
lady, in a riding-habit, sat weeping at a seat near the 
table. The difficulty had arisen because the driver 
would not carry the lady to the place where she main- 
tained he had agreed to take her, but insisted upon 
going to a little town away from the principal road, 
where he had other business. He declared that he had, 
in the first bargain, agreed to carry her to this place. 
The host had taken the part of the young, timid beauty. 
On hearing she was the daughter of the minister of a 
village an hour's ride from my home, and but little out 
of my way there, I soon set the matter right. The 
lady, after some hesitation (I told her where I was going 



ERAS IN WOMAN'S MFE. 37 

and who I was), yielded to my request, and became my 
companion. 

On the way there was much conversation. She had 
a sweet, soft voice, the purest, most angelic innocence 
in all her looks. In my whole life, no ideal pictured 
beauty had I ever seen with such loving, kind and 
trusting eyes. I learnt she was called Adela. Her 
brother, two weeks before, had carried her to a small 
town where she had been visiting at the burgomaster's, 
her father's brother. A misunderstanding had doubt- 
less arisen in giving the directions to the stage-coach- 
man, to which I was indebted for a very pleasant day. 
Adela, with all her good humor, appeared to have 
much natural wit. She was, however, rather too timid. 
When I reached her father's village, and I gave her to 
him, a stout, active old man, with what ecstasy did she 
throw her arms about his neck. I almost wished my- 
self her father. Then appeared for the first time her 
natural and true manner. I was not able to stay long, 
notwithstanding the worthy pastor besought me to do 
so. I promised, however, to renew my visit ; which, 
however, 1 did not very soon. I forgot it between busi- 
ness and amusement. 

At a ball, about half a year after, I saw among 
the dancers another lady — for in the thirty-first year of 
an unmarried man, ladies become of the greatest im- 
portance, one trembles more and more at the number 
of years — I saw, as I remarked, a dancer that might be 
called incontestably the queen of all the beauties present 



38 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

The young men fluttered like butterflies about her. 
It warmed my heart, if the eyes of the pretty sylphide 
sometimes turned towards me ; and to my astonishment 
that happened often. But at last it seemed to me as if 
I had seen this lovely figure in some company before, 
perhaps in the city, at Augustina's. I asked my neighbor 
who she was. Heavens ! it was Adela ! very different 
certainly, in her ball dress from herself in her riding 
veil. As she went to rest after the last dance, I, a butter- 
fly of thirty-one, approached the young lady, and she 
was so kind as to recognize her travelling companion. 
We danced. I inquired after the health of her father, re- 
gretted that business had prevented me from visiting him 
— an exaggeration, perhaps, but before such an angel one 
must wash himself clean. I promised myself soon the 
pleasure of a visit, with a pleasant freedom. She assured 
me a visit from me would give her father great pleasure. 
The ball caused a great revolution in me. The presi- 
dent of the criminal court became again a poet. 1 
could not sleep for the whole night long ; I saw nothing 
but celestial glances, dancing seraphim, and Adela float- 
ing between them. I wondered that so lovely, so amia- 
ble, so bewitching a maiden had not yet found a husband. 
Her father, they say, is as worthy as she is beautiful ; 
but, alas, he has not much wealth ! Oh, the fools ! After 
a few days I went to visit the minister: — repeated the 
visit from week to week. Soon I was considered as 
the friend of the family ; Adela would even reproach 
me if I staid away beyond the usual day, and once the 



ERAS IN WOMAN'S LIFE. 39 

tears came into her eyes when I pretended that perhaps 
she would prefer I should not come so often. We 
quarrelled sometimes for the sake of making up again, 
and once in the course of the reconciliation I gave her 
a kiss, which did not renew the quarrel. She was 
silent, and her cheeks glowed with the deepest red. 
In short, I loved and was beloved. The worthy father 
shrugged his shoulders, and said, " You have no 
treasure with her but love, virtue, and economy ; 
but he who knows how to value these, has more than a 
ton of gold." 

With the first flowers of spring, I wove the bridal 
wreath for my Adela. Her father himself blessed our 
union before the altar of his village church. And now, 
by the side of my noble little wife, I was the happiest 
of the happy. 

In time we saw ourselves surrounded by blooming 
children — angels of love — who united us more tenderly 
to each other. Adela became more and more lovely 
every day ; a young mother is certainly more lovely 
than the most beautiful girl. The pure soul of Adela 
elevated my own ideas to a point they had never 
reached before. Man is never entirely happy until he 
has the courage to be virtuous. Before my marriage, I 
had only thought of saving and amassing wealth ; but 
when some years of our wedded life had passed, Adela's 
excellent management had made me feel that if I were 
to lose all I was worth, I could never be unhappy while 
Adela and my children were left me. 



40 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

I now found that my departed father was entirely 
right in what he said when dissuading me from my pur- 
suit of Augustina, in regard to the relative age of a 
husband and wife. For, when I had reached my for- 
tieth year, and Adelaher thirtieth, and we had children 
of six and eight years old frolicking about* us, Adela was 
still a handsome woman, who might have made con- 
quests. Augustina, on the contrary, had arrived at a 
matronly age. 

I seldom heard from the latter. We ourselves 
never wrote to each other. I heard sometimes from 
strangers, that she was somewhat faded, but that she 
was surrounded by a coterie of young men, particularly 
poets and artists, to whom her open table was very 
agreeable. Then I learned that her husband was dead, 
and the poets who formed her court were middle-aged 
enthusiasts and mystics, protestant catholics, and that 
Augustina herself was much given to romancing, and 
some of her poetical effusions had graced the last 
Almanac of the Muses. 

At the same time in which I received a new order 
from the minister to visit the court, I also had a letter 
from Augustina, consulting me on a lawsuit in which 
she had become involved with some of the relatives of 
her late husband, and requesting my advice and pre- 
sence in the affair. I was glad that my approaching 
visit to the city gave me an opportunity to comply 
with her request. 

I was forty, Augustina the same. She could not be 



ERAS IN WOMAN'S LIFE. 41 

so dangerous to me as she was ten years before. This 
time I went the second day after my arrival in the city, 
without any heart-beating, to her house. I had sent 
before to know what time she would receive me, 
because I had been told she was seldom alone, being 
generally surrounded by fashionable poets, listening to 
or reading romantic jingle, talking religious mysticism, 
or at the card-table with ancient ladies or gentlemen — 
for play had become her passion. Her former friends, 
male and female, whom I had seen about her ten years 
before, had fallen off from her, for they were no longer 
sufficient for her. She was known throughout the city 
for her venomous tongue, was at enmity with every- 
body, and if one wished to know the city news, Madame 
Yon Winter was the person to visit. This I had heard 
from two of the former friends of Augustina, whom ten 
years before I used to meet at her house. Hum — 
thought I — but these good friends are also ten years 
older, and perhaps have themselves some disposition to 
slander, or as they call it in the city, scandal. 

It was a summer evening, and as I entered Augus- 
tina's house, the servant told me that her lady was with 
company in the garden. I went. Ah ! the well known 
garden of my childhood ! For the sake of affording the 
subject for a little joke with Augustina, I wore her gold 
ring, which she had twenty years before given me in 
exchange for the pewter one. Now the garden and the 
ring, the Chinese temple before me, I could not remain 
entirely unmoved. 



42 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

" Is your lady alone ? 77 I said to the servant on the 
way. 

" No, she has company, only a few persons. 77 

I entered the temple. There sat, at two tables, two 
parties, engaged so deeply in playing cards that they 
hardly saw me. I recognized Augustina. Oh, all pow- 
erful Time ! how changed ! No, there was no danger 
now. I reflected with delight on my Adeia. 

Augustina was so engrossed in play, that she only 
saluted me, and begged me to excuse her a moment 
until she could finish the game. When this was over, 
she arose, overpowered me with civil speeches and 
questions, ordered refreshments for me, and offered me 
cards. I declined this, as I did not understand the game. 

"In heaven 7 s name, 77 said she, "then how do you 
kill time, if you do not play cards ? It seems unac- 
countable in a man of your spirit. 77 

She resumed her play ; the game was faro. The 
banker had great luck ; all the money of the players 
soon lay before him. Every passion here shone out in 
the burning cheeks, the piercing eyes, the compressed 
lips. The banker was radiant with pleasure. 

" I have stripped you all quickly, 77 said he. " We 
were speaking, just now, of my very costly diamond, 77 
and he displayed a ring on his finger. " I will stake it 
ill a lottery against all the rings in the company. 77 

Eagerly and with longing eyes they all viewed the 
diamond. They accepted the proposal. Madame Yon 
Winter said — 



ERAS IN WOMANS LIFE. 43 

" Rings trouble me at cards ; I have none on." But 
she looked at me ; " apropos, my friend, you are very 
kind, and will lend me yours for the moment." 

Surprised at the request, I drew off Augustina's 
ring and reached it to her. " You see, my lady, it is 
yours ; you may remember it." 

She looked hastily at it, and saying, " So much the 
better," threw it into the pool with the rest, and fixed 
her eye's upon the diamond. But the rings were all 
lost. The banker won. Even the holy ring of our first 
love was gone, and on the very spot where in tears I 
had received it. Oh, all-powerful Time, how dost thou 
overturn everything ! 

We went to supper. The guests were in good 
humor ; Augustina forced herself to appear gay, which 
gave to her aged features a disagreeable contortion. 
The wine was applied to, to raise the tone of the conver- 
sation ; it became more gay but not more wise. The 
news of the city was discussed ; their acquaintances and 
the secret histories of them passed in review. The 
conversation did not lack wit so much as charity, and 
to my great grief Augustina was the most full in 
wicked remarks. She did not hesitate, sometimes, to 
bear hard upon her own guests. Ah, could I have 
thought the adored, angelic being of fourteen would 
ever have reached this point ? I felt weary and dis- 
gusted ; and when, after supper, the cards were resumed 
I took my leave. 

It distressed me to find myself in the city, or rather 



44 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

to have seen Augustina so changed. I visited her once 
or twice with reference to the progress of her lawsuit, 
but I did not find her more agreeable than at first. In 
spite of the wrinkles in her face, she was not willing to 
be thought old. She freely applied rouge. I acted as 
if I did not perceive it. She now and then appeared 
willing to talk sentimentally of our former tender rela- 
tion to each other, but it was disgusting to me. When 
I once let fall a word about her being forty years old, 
she looked at me with astonishment. 

" I believe you are dreaming, Mr. President," said 
she; "your memory fails before its time. When we 
were first acquainted, you were ten and I five years old. 
I was still playing with my dolls — I remember it per- 
fectly. A girl of ten years thinks no longer of her 
dolls, but on more serious matters. Therefore I am 
now five-and-thirty ; and, between ourselves, it is 
not impossible that I should marry again. A very 
excellent man, one of our first poets, has been long 
seeking for my hand. All his poems to the Madonna, 
to the saints — all his holy legends, breathe the sweet 
fire of pure affection for me." 

I gave my good wishes to the success of " the sweet 
fire of pure affection," and was glad to leave the neigh- 
borhood of the court, and return again to my Adela and 
her children. 

One does not realize he is old until he sees the rav- 
ages of time in the well-known faces of his youthful 
friends. I returned from the city older than I went 



ERAS IN WOMAN'S LIFE. 45 

there. But as I embraced again my true, my faithful 
Adela, and my children clamoring about me, I un- 
packed first this thing and then that, which I had 
brought as presents from the city ; then I grew young 
again. In the domestic circle of innocence and love is 
eternal youth. 

" In the course of time, many go before us into the 
better and enduring and higher world of spirits, and our 
hearts bleed for them. But even these separations make 
life and the world more important to us ; they join the 
Here and There more firmly in our minds, and carry 
something more spiritual, more exalted, into our 
thoughts, wishes and actions. The child is well pleased 
with a flower, a colored stone, a narrow play-ground, and 
grieves himself little about the pursuits of grown up men. 
The young man and the young maiden press out into the 
broad world and the free air. The nursery becomes too 
narrow for them. They would have something more. 
They win, they lose, they strive, they never are satisfied. 
They would gain all the good of the earth ; at last, even 
this is not enough. With years life grows broader, and 
our views of life. To the child, the flower and the 
colored stone become too little ; to the man and woman, 
the enjoyment of all honor, all wealth, indifferent ; the 
earth has too little for the spirit — it stretches out its 
arms into the universe — it demands and it receives eter- 
nity." 

These were the words which the respected father of 
Adela said to us, on his death-bed. We wept as we 



46 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

stood over the departed, but we loved him with a still 
more earnest, holy love, which sanctified ourselves. 
Adela and I lived a higher life, since there was no bar- 
rier between us and eternity, and we had something to 
love there as here. 

The purest of all joys comes to us from our children. 
I accompanied my eldest son to the University ; and it 
was the most agreeable surprise to Adela and myself, 
when I received, on my fiftieth birthday, the royal 
appointment to the easy and honorable office which I 
now hold. This office made it necessary for me to live 
in the city ; and from there to the University, where 
my son was pursuing his studies, was only a moderate 
day's ride. We were together as often as we wished. 

Adela, indeed, left with regret her native city ; but 
of the court residence she had heard often, and it had a 
charm for her maternal heart in its proximity to her 
first-born son. She was in her fortieth year — no longer 
the ideal beauty which I thought her, when, at our 
first meeting, I saw her beside me in the carriage ; but 
her features had acquired more exalted charms, her form 
had added dignity to grace. The heart of Adela had re- 
tained its youth. I loved her with the first love. Her 
lovely face, distorted by no passion in her youth, needed 
no false coloring to make it charming. 

She knew my early relations with Augustina, and 
when we came to the city, she was very curious to be- 
come acquainted with my first love. 

Three or four months passed away before I visited 



ERAS IN WOMAN'S LIFE. 47 

Madame Yon Winter, for I felt little inclination to do 
so. We were told she no longer received company, 
that she lived extremely retired, and had become in her 
later years as avaricious as she had before been extrav- 
agant. This change of feeling might be considered as a 
consequence of her passion for gaming, to which she 
gave herself up, when she was no longer young enough 
for gallantry. She was most frequently found at mass, 
for, some years before, excited by the romantic poets of 
the fashionable school, she had thrown herself into the 
bosom of the only true church, and had become a 
catholic. 

When I visited her now for the first time, I was 
conducted again into the garden. As I passed through 
the house, I had seen pictures of the saints hanging on 
the dusty walls. The garden was like a wilderness, 
and thorns grew where Augustina and I had once 
enjoyed the marriage feast. The acacias had been cut 
down, out of economy, to make firewood. The Chinese 
temple had lost all its outward ornaments, and was 
covered with honest Dutch tiles ; little pointed gothic 
windows of colored glass, like the church windows of 
the times of romance, and a cross on the top of the 
roof, made the house resemble a little chapel. 

And so it was. As I entered, I saw an altar, a 
crucifix, and an eternal lamp. Madame Winter, fifty 
years old, clad in a very simple matronly dress, just 
arisen from her devotions, came to meet me, her rosary 
in her hand, and the murmur of a prayer on her lips. 



48 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

I stood still before her. She knew me and seemed 
pleased. I could not conquer my feelings, but without 
moving I took her hand, and with moistened eyes 
pointed to the chapel. " Ah, Augustina," cried I, 
''when the light vine-bower stood here — when we in 
happy childhood exchanged our pewter rings — when, ten 
years after, lover and beloved, we gave and received the 
first kiss of our innocent love, and vowed before 
heaven " 

"I beseech you, think no more of such vain child- 
ren's play," interrupted she. 

" Ah, Augustina, it was not well to change the sim- 
ple vine-bower into the splendid boudoir ; still worse 
that I should see the golden ring of love thrown away 
at the faro-table ; and now a chapel !" 

" Sir," said Madame Winter, " we are cured at last 
of the intoxication of the world and its vain plea- 
sures. You wound my heart by such recollections. 
If your salvation is dear to you, follow my example, 
learn to forsake a false world, and call upon the sain's 
in heaven for their intercession." 

When I returned home, I said to Adela, "No, 
dearest, we will not go to see her. I no longer know 
her. She has become a bigoted devotee. Oh, all-pow 
erful Time !" 



JOSEPHINE. 

Thou, who didst seem in youth to be 
Sustained alike through good or ill, 

By star, or fate, or destiny, 

That told thee of a triumph still ! 

While the great hope of future good 
Dispelled the dreary prison's gloom, 

"Was there no warning understood 
Of evil also in thy doom ? 

Could not the voice that had such power, 
To bring thee dreams of future fame, 

Prepare thee for that after hour, 
Of deep disgrace and bitter shame ? 

Did not the glass, where thou couldst see 
The crowned queen, and honored wife, 

E'er show thee, in sad prophecy, 

Thy worse than widowed close of life ? 

Alas ! alas ! thy future shows 

How vain are hope's delusive gleams — 
True wisdom never comes to those, 

Who trust in sorceries and dreams. 

4 



50 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

No knowledge can avail but this, 
Of all men ever learned or heard, 

To know God's will and promises 
And knowing, take him at his word 

Yet in thy darkest hour of shame, 
Whatever thy sins and follies past, 

Who would not pity more than blame. 
And weep above thy fall at last. 

Yea, weep for thee, that heavy day, 
Thou stoodst aside, uncheered, alone, 

That Austria's beauty might have way 
To pass unhindered to- the throne. 

Yet lo ! how surely future years, 
Avenge the evils of the past ; 

For all thy sorrows, and thy tears, 
Thou surely art repaid, at last. 

And he who hoped by wrong like this, 
To gain a good for future years, 

Has shown how less than foolishness 
Man's wisdom in the end appears. 

No farther than the meanest may, 

Could pierce that proud and kingly glance 

Thy royal son, not his to day, 

"Wears the imperial crown of France. 



MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 

BY ALEXANDER H. EVERETT. 

It is remarkable that many of the best books, of all 
sorts, have been written by persons, who, at the time 
of writing them, had no intention of becoming authors. 
Indeed, with a slight inclination to systematize and 
exaggerate, one might be almost tempted to maintain 
the position — however paradoxical it may at first blush 
appear — that no good book can be written in any other 
way ; that the only literature of any value, is that 
which grows indirectly out of the real action of society, 
intended directly to effect some other purpose ; and 
that when a man sits down doggedly in his study, and 
says to himself, " I mean to write a good book," it is 
certain, from the necessity of the case, that the result 
will be a bad one. 

To illustrate this by a few examples : Shakspeare, 
the Greek Dramatists, Lope and Calderon, Corneille, 
Racine, and Moliere — in short, all the dramatic poets 
of much celebrity, prepared their works for actual 
representation, at times when the drama was the 

51 



52 JOSEPHINE GALLER1. 

favorite amusement. Their plays, when collected, 
make excellent books. At a later period, when the 
drama had in a great measure gone out of fashion, 
Lord Byron, a man not inferior, perhaps, in poetical 
genius to any of the persons just mentioned, under- 
takes — without any view to the stage — to write a book 
of the same kind. What is the result ? Something 
which, as Ninon de l'Enclos said of the young Marquis 
de Sevigne, has very much the character of fricasseed 
snow. Homer, again, or the Homerites — a troop of 
wandering minstrels — composed, probably without put- 
ting them to paper, certain songs and ballads, which 
they sung at the tables of the warriors and princes of 
their time. Some centuries afterwards, Pisistratus made 
them up into a book, which became the bible of Greece. 
Yoltaire, whose genius perhaps was equal to that of 
any of the Homerites, attempted in cold blood to make 
just such a book ; and here again the product — called 
the Henriade— is no book, but another lump of fricasseed 
snow. What are all your pretended histories ? Fables, 
jest books, satires, apologies, anything but what they 
profess to be. Bring together the correspondence of a 
distinguished public character — a Washington, a Welling- 
ton — and then, for the first time, you have a real history. 
Even in so small a matter as a common letter to a 
friend, if you write one for the sake of writing it, in 
order to produce a good letter as such, you will proba- 
bly fail. Who ever read one of Pliny's precious speci- 
mens of affectation and formality, without wishing that 



MADAME DE SEVIGNE*. 53 

he had perished in the same eruption of Vesuvius that 
destroyed his uncle ? On the contrary, let one who 
has anything to say to another at a distance, in the 
way of either business or friendship, commit his 
thoughts to paper, merely for the purpose of com- 
municating them, and he will not only effect his im- 
mediate object, but, however humble may be his lite- 
rary pretensions, will commonly write something that 
may be read with pleasure by an indifferent third per- 
son. In short, experience seems to show that every 
book, prepared with a view to mere book-making, is 
necessarily a sort of counterfeit, bearing the same 
relation to a real book, which the juggling of the 
Egyptian magicians did to the miracles of Moses. 

But not to push these ideas to extravagance, it may 
be sufficient for the present purpose to say that Madame 
de Sevign6, without intending to become an author, 
has, in fact, produced one of the most agreeable and 
really valuable books that have ever been written. 
Her letters are not sermons, or essays in disguise, 
but were composed, without any view to publication, 
for the purpose of talking on paper to a beloved daugh- 
ter, with whom the writer had in a manner identified 
her existence. They are, therefore, a genuine thing 
of their kind, and besides answering the purpose for 
which they were originally written, may be expected, 
as was just now remarked, to possess an accidental 
value for the public, which will be greater or less 
according to the character of the writer. In the pre 



54 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

sent case, this accidental value is very high, in conse • 
quence of the extraordinary merit and talent of Madame 
de Sevigne, and the elevated sphere in which she moved. 
It has been justly observed by Madame de Stael, 
that the private life of almost every individual, pro- 
perly treated, would furnish materials for an interesting 
romance. It is easy to imagine, therefore, that a col- 
lection of letters, covering the period of half a century 
in the domestic history of one of the most distinguished 
and accomplished families in France — written through- 
out in a manner which is admitted by all to be the per- 
fection of the epistolary style — must have the charm 
of a first-rate novel. But, in addition to this, they 
have another value, of a perfectly distinct, if not much 
higher kind, as a picture by a master-hand of one of 
the most brilliant periods in the history of civilization. 
Madame de SeVigne was placed by birth and marriage 
in the highest circles of the Court of Louis XI Y., and 
maintained a constant personal intercourse, more or 
less intimate, with all the prominent political men from 
the king downwards. Her superior intellect and lite- 
rary tastes and habits also gave her an interest in the 
current literature. The popular authors and their 
books are among her regular topics. These new 
books, of which she notices the publication and first 
effect, are no other than the acknowedged master-pieces 
of modern art ; their authors are Corneille, Racine, 
Moliere and La Fontaine, De Retz and La Roche- 
foucault, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Fleshier and Massillon. 



MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 55 

Again ; her fascinating manners and splendid con- 
versational powers — for she seemed to have excelled 
as much in conversation as in writing — rendered her a 
universal favorite, and the life of every circle in which 
she appeared. She is constantly surrounded — abroad 
and at home, in town or in the country — by the most 
interesting portion of the refined and cultivated classes. 
Thus, the varied and brilliant panorama, exhibited at 
the Court of Versailles during the reign of Louis XI V., 
is reflected in her letters with a perfect truth to nature, 
and a magical grace, vivacity, and elegance of style. 
Finally, these remarkable letters derive their last and 
highest charm from the excellent and moral tone that 
pervades the whole collection. Living in a society 
where licentiousness had ceased to be regarded as 
criminal, and was countenanced by the almost universal 
practice of the court, Madame de Sevigne, though con- 
tinually wrought upon by influences of the most seduc- 
tive kind, maintained the purity of her personal char- 
acter unsullied by blemish or suspicion. At a time 
when there was, generally speaking, no medium in the 
circles in which she moved, between the avowed volup- 
tuary and the ascetic, she avoided both extremes ; and 
following with firmness, or rather without any apparent 
effort, the impulse of a naturally sound judgment and 
affectionate heart, united a sincere interest in religion 
and a scrupulously correct course of practical conduct 
with a cheerful and genuine enjoyment of life. She 
habitually read, thought, and conversed on religious 



56 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

subjects, and often makes them the topic of her letters. 
She hangs with rapture upon the lips of the great 
pulpit orators, Bossuet, Flechier. and particularly 
Bourdaloue, who seems to be her especial favorite. 
She has even at times a slight leaning towards a 
severe system of morals, from her strong attach- 
ment to Messieurs de Port-Royal, whose works she 
regularly devours as they come out ; and she now and 
then pleasantly laments that she cannot be a devote 
that is, that she cannot make up her mind to retire 
into a convent and give herself up to religious exercises, 
meditation and solitude. In these regrets, however, 
as may well be supposed, she is not more than half 
in earnest. Her good sense and cheerful temper pre- 
vent her from yielding to these momentary impulses, 
sustain her steadily in a uniform line of conduct 
through a life of threescore and ten years, diversified 
by many painful scenes, and shed a sunny glow over 
her whole correspondence. Her pictures of life have 
none of the false coloring, sometimes called romantic, 
and yet we know no book that leaves upon the mind 
a more agreeable impression of the character of the 
author and of human nature in general. We see that 
here are real men and women, fashioned, in all 
respects, as we are, and provided with an ample 
allowance of faults and weaknesses, but of whom 
the better portion sincerely love one another, and 
cheerfully make sacrifices for each other's welfare ; 
this is the true, and, for that reason, the most improv- 



MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 57 

ing and edifying as well as the most attractive view of 
human life. 

Carlyle, in his review of Boswell's Johnson, re- 
presents that work as the best that was published in 
England during the last century. Madame de Se>igne 
is a sort of French Boswell ; and without going, in 
regard to her, to the full length of Carlyle's rather 
extravagant eulogy upon the Johnsoniad, as he calls it, 
we can say with truth that we hardly know any French 
literary work of the last century for which we would 
exchange her letters. In reality, however, the letters, 
though published during the last century, belong to 
the preceding one by character, as well as date ; and 
display the vigor of thought, and the pure taste in 
style, which characterized the period of Louis XIV., 
and of which we find so few traces even in the best 
French productions of subsequent times. It is amusing 
to remark the complete contrast, in other respects, 
between two works of which the general scope and 
object coincide so nearly as those of Boswell and 
Madame de Sevigne\ The stolid, blundering, drunken, 
self-sufficiency of poor Bozzy, united ridiculously 
enough with a most grovelling subserviency to the 
literary leviathan whom he had made his idol, sets 
off in high relief the airy though finished elegance 
of the bettissima Madre, and the graceful ease with 
which she handles every subject and character that 
comes in her way. The narrative form adopted by 
Boswell, and the entire sacrifice of all the other char- 



58 JOSEPHINE GALLERY, 

acters to the redoubtable Doctor, increase the unity 
and with it the interest of the work ; but, for the 
same reason, they make it, what it indeed professes 
to be, a biographical rather than a historical one. In 
the letters of Madame de Sevign6, the characters all 
appear in their just proportions ; the vast canvas is 
not the portrait of an individual, but the panorama 
of an age. 

These letters are so perfect in their kind that the 
good-natured generation of critics have been rather 
at a loss to know how to find fault with them. The 
only objection that has ever been made to the style, 
is, that the writer uses, perhaps half a dozen times in 
her twelve volumes, two or three words, which, though 
considered polite in her time, are now obsolete. As 
regards the substance, there is no unfavorable judg- 
ment of much authority, excepting that of Lady Mary 
Wortley Montagu, who pronounces the letters to be 
mere tittle-tattle, and the author something between 
a fine lady and an old nurse. When will rival wits 
and belles learn to do each other justice ? Without 
disparagement to her ladyship's taste and judgment, 
we incline to the opinion that the tittle-tattle of circles 
in which Conde and Corneille conversed with Louis 
XIY., Turenne, Bossuet, Pascal, Fenelon and Sevigne, 
will be thought, hereafter, at least as interesting as 
descriptions of Turkish manners and scenery, agree- 
able as these, from the elegant pen of Lady Mary, 
undoubtedly are. 



MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 59 

Madame de Sevigne belonged to the noble family 
of Babutin-Chautal, and was born in 1626. Her 
grandmother, the Baroness of Chautal, was a person 
of extraordinary piety. She instituted the order of 
Sisters of the Visitation, of which she established 
eighty-four convents in France. In the year 1767, 
,she was canonized by Pope Clement XIV., as one of 
the saints of the Catholic church. Her son, and 
Madame de Sevigne's father, Baron Chautal, though 
essentially, as it appears, a good-natured person, seems 
to have practised a singular frankness in his epistolary 
style, at least if we may judge from a specimen which 
is preserved in the letters of his daughter. On the 
elevation of Mr. de Schomberg to the dignity of Mar- 
shal of France, Chautal addressed him in the following 
laconic letter : 

" Monseigneur — 

" Qualite : Barbe noire : famihartle. 

" Chautal. 77 

In this rather enigmatical dispatch, the Baron is 
understood to have intended to reproach his corres- 
pondent with being indebted for his promotion to his 
high birth, his beard, which was black like that of 
Louis XIII., and his personal acquaintance with the 
king. Baron Chautal commanded the French forces, 
which were stationed at the Isle of Rhe to repulse the 
attack of the English under the Duke of Buckingham, 
in 1627 On this occasion he sustained himself hero- 



60 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

ically for six hours in succession, had three horses 
killed under him, and received twenty-seven wounds 
— the last, as is said, from the hand of Oliver Cromwell, 
which proved fatal. His widow died in 1632, leaving 
their only daugher, afterwards Madame de Sevign6, an 
orphan, six years old. She owed her education chiefly 
to her uncle, the Abbe* de Livry, of the Coulanges 
family, who took a paternal care of her through life, 
and left her his property. He lived to an advanced 
age, and figures constantly in the letters under the title 
of le Men ton. 

Mademoiselle de Chautal was presented at the 
court of Louis XIII., at the age of about seventeen. 
At this time she is described as having been remark- 
ably handsome. She was of middling stature, with a 
good person, a profusion of light colored hair, an 
uncommonly fresh and brilliant complexion, indicating 
luxuriant health, a musical voice, a lively and agree- 
able manner, and a more than ordinary skill in the 
elegant accomplishments that belong to a finished 
education. Her cousin, the notorious Count de Bussy- 
Rabutin, in a sort of satirical portrait of her, written 
in a fit of ill-humor, amused himself at the expense of 
her square nose and parti-colored eyelashes, to which 
she occasionally alludes herself in her letters. Bussy, 
however, in his better moods, does justice to her 
appearance, as well as character, and repeatedly pro- 
nounces her, in his letters, the handsomest woman in 
France. Her beauty, which seems to have depended 



MADAME DB SEVIGNE. 61 

on her health and a happy temperament, rather than 
a mere regularity of features, improved with age, 
and she retained to a very late period of life the titles 
of bellissima Madre, and the Mother Beauty {mire 
beaut e), which were conferred upon her by her cousin 
Coulanges, and confirmed by the general voice of the 
society in which she lived. The year following her 
appearance at Court she married the Marquis de Se- 
vigne, who was killed in a duel six years later, leaving 
her a wealthy and attractive widow, of about four-and- 
twenty, at a court where, as has been already re- 
marked, licentiousness was nearly universal, and where 
the women of fashion passed, almost without excep- 
tion, through the two periods of gallantry in early life, 
and ascetic devotion after the age of pleasure was over. 
It is no slight merit in Madame de Sevigne, consid- 
ering the circumstances, that she steered clear of both 
these opposite excesses, and stood by general acknow- 
ledgment above suspicion. This is fairly admitted 
even by her enemies, or rather enemy, for her cousin 
Bussy was the only person who ever openly found fault 
with her. In order to have some apology for refusing 
her the credit she deserves, he ascribes her correct 
conduct to coldness of temperament, as if every line 
of her correspondence did not prove that her heart was 
overflowing with kindness, and that she was habitually 
under the influence of impulse, quite as much as of 
calculation. No better proof of this will be wanted, 
at least by the ultra-prudent generation of New Eng- 



62 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

land parents, than that she sacrificed a great part of her 
large fortune in establishing her son and daughter, and 
found herself, in her later years, reduced to compara- 
tively quite narrow circumstances. It was her felicity, 
or rather her merit, that her affections, strong as they 
were, flowed in. healthy and natural channels, instead 
of wasting themselves on forbidden objects. The evident 
ill-humor with which Lady M. W. Montagu speaks 
of her and her writings, was probably o*wing, in part, 
to a consciousness of the great superiority in this respect 
of the character of Madame de Sevigne to her own. 

Madame de Sevigne not only kept herself aloof from 
the almost universal licentiousness of her time, but 
steadily refused all offers of marriage, and devoted her- 
self with exemplary assiduity to the education of her 
two children, a son and daughter. The latter is the 
person to whom the greater part of the letters are 
addressed. The same authorities which represent the 
mother as the handsomest woman in France, describe 
the daughter as the handsomest young lady [la plus 
joliefille). She was married at eighteen to the Count de 
Grignan, a nobleman of high consideration and appar- 
ently excellent character, who was called on soon after 
to act as governor of Provence. His lady naturally ac- 
companied him, and the separation that took place 
in consequence between the mother and daughter, 
was the immediate cause of the correspondence, which 
has given them both, and particularly the former, so ex- 
tensive a celebrity. After a few detached letters of 



MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 63 

an earlier date, the principal series commences with the 
departure of Madame de Grignan for Provence, and is 
kept up at very short intervals — excepting when the 
parties were occasionally together, sometimes for years 
in succession — through the whole life of Madame de 
Sevigne ; who, at the age of seventy, died at her daugh- 
ter's residence, of small pox, brought on by excessive 
care and fatigue in attending upon this beloved child 
through a severe and protracted illness of several 
months : — thus, finally sacrificing her life to the strong 
maternal love, to which she had already sacrificed her 
fortune, and which had been the absorbing passion 
and principal source of happiness of all her riper years. 
This deeply affecting catastrophe crowns with a sort 
of poetical consistency, the beautiful and touching ro- 
mance of real life, which it brings to a close. 

The letters, considered merely as a sketch of the 
private adventures of the parties, revolve round the cir- 
cle of incidents, which made up, at that time, the his- 
tory of every family of the same class. The son's 
achievements in the wars — the marriage of the daugh- 
ter — her health and the birth of her children — her 
husband's affairs, which became embarrassed from the 
necessity of keeping up an immense household as gov- 
ernor of Provence, without any adequate allowance 
from the King to cover the expense — the establishment 
of her daughter's children — together with the adven- 
tures of other more remote branches of the family, com- 
pose the outline of the plot, which is of course simple 



64 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

enough. The characters of the corresponding parties, 
and their immediate connections, are also, with the 
exception of Madame de Sevigne" herself, ra.ther common 
place. The son, who was placed at great expense to his 
mother in the army, seems to have made little or no 
figure and retired early to a life of inactivity. The 
daughter, Madame de Grignan, in the few of her letters 
which are preserved, says nothing to justify the un- 
bounded admiration with which she is constantly spoken 
of by her mother, and the whole family circle. Count 
de Bussy is an original, but of an unpleasant kind , and 
is never entertaining, excepting when he makes himself 
ridiculous, which happens rather often. The Coulanges 
are mere votaries of fashion, and so of the rest. But 
the test of genius, as need hardly be said, is, proprie 
communia dicere — to produce great effects with common 
materials — to tell the story of life, as it really passes, 
in a lively, original and entertaining way. The brilliant 
imagination and magical pen of Madame de Sevigne* 
threw an air of novelty over all these every-day char- 
acters and incidents, and we follow the development 
of their fortunes with an interest that never flags 
through the whole twelve volumes. 

At the present day, however, these letters, though 
highly agreeable as a picture of domestic life in France 
at the period when they were written, are, from the ex- 
traordinary importance of that period, still more 
valuable, as a record of contemporary events and 
characters. It may be amusing to the reader to cast a 



MADAME DE SEVIGNE. C5 

glance — of course exceedingly rapid and cursory — over 
some of the scenes that are successively brought before 
the eye in traversing this long and well-stored gallery. 

The collection opens with two or three letters to 
Menage, a sort of pedant, who then enjoyed the reputa- 
tion of a wit. He had some share in the education 
of Madame de Sevigne and seems to have availed 
himself of the occasion to fall in love with her. He is 
quietly taught to keep his distance, and, taking the hint ; 
soon retires into silence and we hear no more of him. 

The next personage that occupies the stage is the 
eccentric cousin, Bussy-Rabutin, now in the full flow of 
youthful impertinence and self-sufficiency, sowing his 
wild oats with a profuse hand in all quarters. The 
great Turenne, who combined with transcendent mili- 
tary talents, an almost childish simplicity of character, 
could, nevertheless, at times say a good thing, and 
one day informed the King that Bussy was the best 
officer in the army — at a song. The King pretty soon 
had occasion to know by experience the extent of 
Bussy's talent in this way, the latter having in one of 
his ballads, introduced the following highly complimen- 
tary epigram upon Louis XIV. and Madame de la 
Valliere — who, it appears, had a rather wide mouth : 

" Que Deodatus* est heureux 
De baiser ce bee amoureux, 
Que (Tune oreille a l'autre va 
Halleluia ! " 

* Deodatus (Dieu-donne) was one of the names of Louis XIV. 

5 



66 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

" What a fortunate man is our gracious sovereign m 
being permitted to salute a mouth that stretches so 
invitingly from ear to ear !" The epigram, which is, af- 
ter all, none of the best, cost poor Bussy pretty dear. 
Louis, though not very intolerant in similar cases, 
thought this a little too bad, or was, perhaps, set on 
by the lady, who was probably not much gratified by 
seeing the longitude of her mouth so nicely calcu- 
lated, and sent Bussy to the Bastile. After doing pen- 
ance there for a few months, he was permitted to retire 
to his estates, where he remained an exile from the 
Court for the rest of his life. He appears, from time to 
time, through the whole course of the letters, affect- 
ing much philosophy and resignation, but always en- 
gaged in some new effort to recover the King's favor. 
It is not very easy, however, for a singed moth to 
get back his wings. All these efforts successively failed, 
and Bussy died at an advanced age, as he had lived, 
in exile. Madame de SeVigne never entirely forgave 
him for his wanton and malignant attack upon her in the 
portrait. She receives his apologies, though conceived 
in the most fulsome strain of flattery and devotion, 
for a time with bitterness ; and though at length appar- 
ently softened, maintains a constrained and formal tone 
in her correspondence with him to the last. 

The personage next in order is one of higher politi- 
cal importance, the celebrated Superintendent Fouquet, 
the Wolsey of France. His history is well known. The 
immense fortune, which he had amassed in the exercise 



MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 67 

of his office, and the ostentatious display which he made 
of it, were the real causes of his ruin. He had assumed 
for his arms a squirrel, pursued by a snake, which 
was the device of Colbert, with the motto, Quo non 
ascendant ? This was emblazoned in every form upon 
the walls and furniture of his splendid residence at 
Yaux le Yicomte. The picture was prophetic of his for- 
tune. The wily enemy was too successful in the pursuit 
of his indiscreet prey. Colbert, a statesman much 
superior in conduct to Fouquet, and the Secretary of 
State, Le Tellier, afterwards Marquis de Louvois, roused 
the jealousy of the King by representations of the inor- 
dinate wealth of the Superintendent. Shortly after 
an entertainment which he had given to the King 
and Court at Yaux, and which had exceeded in mag- 
nificence anything of the kind ever known in France, he 
was arrested, and his papers were seized. ■ Among these 
was unfortunately found the draft of some plot against 
Cardinal Mazarin, formed many years before during the 
ministry of Louis XI Y., when the different members 
of the royal family were at war with each other, and 
when it was rather difficult for any one to say what the 
government was, or who was in possession of it. This 
project, which had never been acted on, had lain forgot- 
ten among the papers of Fouquet, and was now made 
the pretext of his ruin. After having been kept in con- 
finement three years, he was tried for his life by a 
special commission, as the author of the paper alluded 
to. The Court made the strongest efforts to procure a 



68 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

sentence of death, but could only obtain one of per- 
petual banishment, which the King commuted into 
the severer one of imprisonment for life. The fate 
of Fouquet, who seems to have been a vain, ambi- 
tious and corrupt man, now excites little sympathy ; but 
the means employed to bring it about were not very 
creditable to the character of Louis. The Superintend- 
ent had made himself a general favorite by his pro- 
fuse liberality, and his patronage of the arts, in con- 
sequence of which, and of the manifest injustice of 
the proceedings against him, his case called forth at 
the time much commiseration among the better part 
of society. Turenne, in particular, took a strong inter- 
est in his favor. One day, when some one was com- 
mending in his presence the moderation of Le Tellier ; 
and blaming the violence of Colbert : " Why, yes, 7 ' 
replied Turenne, " Colbert is rather more eager to 
get him hung than Le Tellier, but Le Tellier is much 
more afraid that he will escape than Colbert." 

Madame de Sevigne* had been on friendly terms 
with Fouquet, and had written him some letters during 
his prosperity. They were found among his papers, and 
without throwing any imputation upon her character, 
made known to the Court, for the first time, the graces 
of her epistolary style. She was present at the trial of 
Fouquet, and gives in several letters a minute and 
highly interesting account of the proceedings. Fouquet 
passed a number of years in close confinement in the 
fortress of Pignerol ; was finally released on account of 



MADAME DE SEVIG-NE. 60 

the bad state of his health, and died a few months after 
his liberation. 

The death of Turenne furnishes Madame de Sevigne 
with a subject for several of her finest letters. This 
great commander was killed nearly in the same way 
with General Moreau. He was at the head of the 
French army in the campaign of 1675 ; and was pro- 
ceeding, one day after dinner, to examine from an 
eminence the position of the enemy, who were retreat- 
ing before him. He had with him a large suite, includ- 
ing his nephew, the Count d'Elbeuf, Count Hamilton, 
and M. de St. Hilaire. As he approached the eminence, 
he said to M. d'Elbeuf, " You are too near me, nephew 
You will make me known to the enemy." Immediately 
after, Count Hamilton said to him, ' ' Come this way, 
sir, they are firing on the point where you are." To 
which Turenne replied, " You are right. I should 
not like to be killed to-day, when matters are going 
on so well." He had scarcely turned his horse when 
St. Hilaire came up to him, hat in hand, and begged 
him to take a look at a battery which he had just been 
constructing, a little in the other direction. Turenne 
returned, and at the same moment a ball, which also 
carried away the arm of St. Hilaire, struck him in the 
body. His horse started at the shock, and conveyed the 
rider back to the place where he had left his nephew. 
The hero had not yet fallen, but was bowed down 
upon his horse's neck, and when the animal stopped, 
s :nk into the arms of the attendants, convulsively 



TO JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

opened his eyes and mouth two or three times, and 
then expired. The ball had carried away a portion of 
his heart. 

Funeral orations were delivered in honor of Turenne 
by the great pulpit orators, Mascaron and Flechier, upon 
both of which we have commentaries from Madame 
de Sevigne. The former seems to have attracted rather 
more of her attention than the latter ; and this pre- 
ference has been considered as a proof of bad taste, but 
was probably owing to the circumstance, that she did 
not hear the oration of Flechier, having been at the 
time ill in the country. In general, as we said 
before, she speaks frequently of the pulpit orators, 
particularly Bourdaloue. The effect of his eloquence 
upon his audiences seems to have been very great. 
One day, while he was delivering a sermon, the 
Marshal de Grammont was so much struck with the 
truth of a particular passage, that he expressed his 
approbation aloud, on the spot, in the not very edifying 
ejaculation, Man Dieu, ila raison ! The princesses, who 
were present, burst into a loud fit of laughter, and 
it was some time before order could be restored. 

Madame de Sevigne does full justice on various 
occasions to Bossuet. The magnificent funeral oration 
which he delivered upon the great Conde, beginning 
with the well-known Dieu seul est grand, contains a 
parallel between Conde and Turenne, which did not, at 
the time, give entire satisfaction to the Court. As 
Conde was a prince of the blood royal, it was thought 



MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 71 

rather indecorous that any mere nobleman, however ele* 
vated in rank, (and Turenne was himself a prince), 
should be brought into competition with him. Count 
de Grammont, a nephew of the Marshal, said to the 
King after hearing Bossuet, that he had been listen- 
ing to the funeral oration of M. de Turenne ; and 
Madame de Sevigne herself remarks that M. de Meaux, 
in comparing without necessity these two great cap- 
tains, gave credit to Conde for talent and good fortune, 
but allowed to Turenne the higher praise of prudence 
and good conduct. This brilliant aristocracy little 
thought, at the time, how soon a Corsican adven- 
turer, with very doubtful pretensions to nobility of any 
kind, was to seat himself in triumph on the throne of St. 
Louis. 

Louis XI Y. figures frequently in the letters, and, 
to do him justice, makes a good figure wherever 
he appears. Like his contemporary and pensioner, 
Charles II., he possessed the a propos in discourse, and 
a remarkable happiness in repartee. Thus, when he was 
taking leave of the unfortunate James II., at his depar- 
ture for Ireland on the expedition for the recovery 
of his crown, he said to him, " I shall always be proud 
and happy to receive your majesty in my kingdom, but 
the greatest compliment that I can pay you at parting is 
to wish that I may never see you again." When the 
Marquis of Uxelles, who after a gallant defence had beer 
compelled by want of powder and provisions to surren- 
der the fortress of Mentz, returned to Paris, he was 



72 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

hissed, on his first appearance in the theatre. The King, 
by way of compensation, received him at Court with 
great favor, and said to him, "Sir, you defended 
your post like a man of spirit, and surrendered like 
a man of sense." One day at the King's Levee, the 
conversation turning upon the loss of a recent battle by 
the Marshal de Crequi, some one of the courtiers 
inquired of his majesty why the Marshal fought this 
battle? "Your question," said the King, in reply, 
" reminds me of a similar one, which was addressed 
to the famous Duke of Saxe- Weimar, during the thirty 
years' war, by a veteran officer in a blue riband 
named Parabere : " You ask me why I fought the 
battle," said Weimar in reply, " why, sir, I fought 
it because I thought I should win it ;" and then turning 
to one of his aids, "Pray," said he, in a voice loud 
enough to be heard by the circle, " who is this old 
fool in the blue riband ?" Bourdaloue in his ser- 
mons lashed the licentiousness of the Court at times with 
a good deal of freedom. On one of these occasions the 
courtiers made some complaint to the King. " Gen- 
tlemen," said he, in answer, " Bourdaloue has done his 
duty ; it remains for us to do ours, and I wish we 
may succeed as well." At another time Massillon 
had been preaching upon the conflict between the 
flesh and the spirit, described by St. Paul, which he re- 
presented figuratively as an internal struggle between two 
persons contending for the mastery. The King went 
forward to meet him as he descended from the pul- 



MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 73 

pit, and, taking him by the hand, said to him, "Ah, mon 
pere ! que je connais Men ces deux-hommes la /" — Ah, 
my good father ! I, for one, am but too well acquainted 
with the two gentlemen you have been speaking of! 

In the satirical portrait of Madame de Sevigne by her 
cousin, Count de Bussy, which has been alluded to, 
he charges her with being too much dazzled by the 
pageantry of the Court, and too much elated by any lit- 
tle personal attention from the King or Queen. " One 
evening," says he, "after the King had been dancing a 
minuet with her, on resuming her seat, which was 
by my side, she remarked, " Well, cousin, it must 
be owned that the King has great qualities ; I think 
he will eclipse the glory of all his predecessors." I 
could not," says Bussy, "help laughing in her face 
at the singularity of the a propos, and replied, "Af- 
ter the proof of heroism which he has just given in 
dancing with you, my fair cousin, there can be no doubt 
about it." She was on the point," adds Bussy, " of 
crying out Vive le Roi, before the whole company." 

There would be no great harm in all this, if it 
were literally true ; but as Bussy afterwards disavowed 
and retracted the whole portrait, it is, of course, un- 
necessary to attach any importance to this passage. 
There is no appearance in the letters of excessive 
admiration of the King. The tone, whenever he is 
mentioned, is evidently guarded, probably from an 
apprehension that all letters passing through the post- 
office were subject to inspection ; but the language 



7 i JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

though commonly laudatory, does not exceed the 
bounds of moderation and justice, for Louis XIY., 
did, in fact, possess great qualities, combined with 
some great weaknesses, and did eclipse the glory of 
most of his predecessors. Madame de Sevigne re- 
peatedly gives her opinion, in pretty plain terms, 
upon the insane passion for wai, which was the promi- 
nent vice in his character ; and, when she praises 
him, generally does it with discrimination. She com- 
mends particularly, on several occasions, his felicity 
in reply, and the correctness of taste with which 
he kept up the decorum of his station, or, as the 
Empress Catherine would have said, enacted the part 
of king. 

The chapter of the King's mistresses is treated 
in the letters with great discretion ; a fact which 
alone is sufficient to refute Lady M. W. Montagu's 
charge of tittle-tattle, since a lover of mere gossip 
would have made this topic the principal one through- 
out the whole correspondence. It is touched upon by 
Madame de Sevigne very sparingly, and always in 
the most proper manner. She seems to have had 
no personal acquaintance with any of the King's 
successive favorites, excepting Madame de Mainte- 
non, to whom he was privately married. With her 
Madame de Sevigne had been somewhat intimate 
in earlier life, and sometimes visited her after her 
marriage to the King. Madame de Montespan is 
occasionally mentioned, and also Mademoiselle de 



MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 75 

Fontanges, who was much more remarkable for beauty 
than wit. "The Fontanges,' 7 said Madame, "though 
her hair is rather red, is beautiful from head to 
foot ; it is impossible to see anything prettier, and 
she is, withal, the best creature in the world ; but 
she has no more wit than a kitten." The Abbe de 
Choisy said of her that she was as " handsome as an 
angel, and as silly as a basket " — {belle comme un 
ange, et sotte comme un panier). The latter similitude 
is new to us ; we have sometimes heard a smiling face 
compared to a basket of chips. 

Among the ladies of the court out of her own family, 
Madame de la Fayette seems to have been the most 
intimate companion of Madame de Sevigne. She was 
one of the ancestors of the distinguished friend of 
America, and was celebrated in her day as the author 
of several very popular novels. She was one of the 
first modern writers of fiction who had the good taste 
to rely for effect on the use of natural incidents and 
characters. Her Princess of Cleves forms the transi- 
tion from the romance of chivalry to the modern 
novel, which is intended as a picture of real life. 
Madame de Cornuel is often mentioned as the wit 
of the circle. Several of her bons mots are quoted, 
which, however, in general, are not very marvellous ; 
one of the best, and that is merely a play on words, 
was occasioned by a negotiation between the King and 
the Pope, which was expected to terminate in the 
publication of certain papal bulls. While the mattei 



76 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

was in progress, the Abbe de Polignac arrived at 
Paris from Rome, bearing the despatches which it was 
generally thought must be the wished-for documents, 
but which proved to be merely preliminary articles. 
" Ce ne sont pas des bulks quHl apporte" said Madame 
de Cornuel, " mats des priambules" 

The men of wit and letters constituted the favor- 
ite society of Madame de Sevigne\ and of these she was 
particularly intimate with the Duke de la Rochefou- 
cault, Cardinal de Retz, and the Abbe Arnauld. 
Among the poets her passion was for Corneille, 
whom she praises throughout the letters in the most 
exalted terms, and quotes upon all occasions. She 
preferred him to Racine, and is reported to have said — 
though the remark does not appear in her letters — that 
the taste for Racine was a mere whim, which would pass 
away, like the taste for coffee. Both have now stood 
the test of nearly two centuries, and seem to be gaining 
rather than losing ground in the public favor. Madame 
de Sevigne herself, at a later period, became more just 
to the merit of Racine, and after witnessing the re- 
presentation of his Esther at Court, speaks of it in terms 
that must satisfy his warmest admirers. Her account of 
this affair is, perhaps, as agreeable a specimen as can be 
given of her letters : 

" We went to St. Cyr on Saturday — Madame de 
Coulanges, Madame de Bagnols, the Abbe Tita, and 
myself. On arriving, we found that places had been 



MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 77 

kept for us. An attendant told Madame de Coulanges, 
that Madame de Maintenon had ordered a seat to be 
reserved for her next to herself. Think what an 
honor! 'As for you, madame,' said he to me, 'take 
your choice.' I placed myself with Madame de Bag- 
nols on the second bench behind the duchesses. Mar- 
shal Beilefonte came and took a seat by my side. 
We listened to the piece with an attention that was 
remarked, and occasionally threw in, in a low tone, 
some complimentary expressions, which could not 
perhaps have been hatched under the fontanges * 
of all the ladies present. I can give you no idea of 
the extreme beauty of the piece. It is something 
which cannot be described, and can never be imitated. 
It is a combination of music, poetry, song and char- 
acter, so complete and perfect, that it leaves nothing 
to be wished. The young ladies, who act the kings 
and great men, seem to have been made on purpose 
for their parts. The attention is fixed, and no other 
regret is felt than that so charming a piece should ever 
come to an end. It is throughout at once simple, 
innocent, touching and sublime. The plot agrees 
entirely with the Scripture narrative ; the choruses, 
of which the words are borrowed from the Psalms 
and the Wisdom of Solomon, are so exquisitely beau- 
tiful, that they cannot be heard without tears. I was 
perfectly charmed, and so was the Marshal, who, 

* Madame de Fontanges had given her name to a particular head 
dress. 



78 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

leaving his place, went and told the King how much 
he was delighted, and that he had been sitting by the 
side of just such a lady as ought to be present at a 
representation of Esther. The King then came up 
to me and said, ' I understand, madame, that you 
have been pleased. 7 I replied without confusion, 
' Sire, I have been charmed. I cannot tell you how 
much I have been delighted. 7 'Racine,' replied the 
king, ' has certainly a great deal of talent.' ' That 
he has, sire,' said I; 'and these young ladies have 
certainly a great deal, too. They play their parts 
as if they had never done anything else.' ' It is true 
enough,' replied the King. His majesty then retired, 
leaving me an object of general envy. As I was 
almost the only person who had not been present at 
any preceding representation, the King was probably 
pleased with my sincere, though quiet expressions 
of satisfaction. The prince and princess came to say 
a word to me ; Madame de Maintenon gave me a look 
as she retired with the King. I was ready with 
answers to every one, for I was in good luck. We 
retired in the evening by torch-light, and supped 
with Madame de Coulanges, to whom the King had 
also spoken with great familiarity and kindness. I 
saw the chevalier, and gave him an account of my 
little success, for I see no necessity for making a mys- 
tery of these things, as some persons do. He was 
highly gratified. So there you have my whole story. 
Mr. de Meaux (Bossuet) talked to me a great deal about 



MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 79 

you, and so did the Prince (Conde). I regret that you 
were not present, but we cannot be in two places at 
the same time." 

This is certainly very pleasant tittle-tattle. On fit 
occasions Madame de Sevigne can discourse in a higher 
and more serious mood. Her letters to M. de Cou- 
langes on the death of the Minister Louvois is an ex- 
ample : 

"I am so much shocked by the sudden death of 
M. de Louvois, that I hardly know what to say of it. 
He is dead, then ! — the great minister — the power- 
ful man — who held so high a place — whose moi, as 
M. Nicole says, was so widely expanded — who was the 
centre of so many interests. How much business has 
he not left unsettled ! How many plans and projects 
but half executed ! How many webs of secret in- 
trigue to be unravelled ! How many wars just begun 
to be brought to a close ! How many moves still to 
be made upon the great political chess-board ! In 
vain he begs for a short respite : ' Oh, my God, allow 
me a little more time ; let me only say check to the 
Duke of Savoy, and mate to the Prince of Orange.' 
' No, no — you shall not have a moment — not a single 
moment.' Is it possible to talk on such matters ? 
Alas, no ! we must reflect upon them in the silence 
of the closet. This is the second minister that has died 
since ycu went to Rome, both bound by a hundred mil 



80 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

lion ties to the world : how unlike their characters ! and 
yet how similar their fates ! 

" As to your faith in religion, which you say is 
shaken by what you see going on around you at 
Rome, permit me to tell you, my dear cousin, that 
you are altogether wrong. I have heard a person 
of the best judgment draw a directly opposite con- 
clusion from what passes in that city at the election 
of a pope. He was satisfied that the Christian reli- 
gion must be of divine origin to be able to sustain 
itself in the midst of so many disorders. This, my 
dear cousin, is the proper view of the subject. Recol- 
lect how often this very city has been bathed in the 
blood of the martyrs. That in the earlier ages of the 
church, the intrigues of the conclave always terminated 
in electing from among the priests the one who ap- 
peared to have the greatest share of fortitude and zeal 
in the cause. That thirty-seven popes, undismayed 
by the certainty of martyrdom, and that in the most 
cruel form, accepted the place, and were conducted 
successively to the stake. If you will only read the 
history of the church, you must be satisfied that a 
religion which was established and continues to sub- 
sist by a perpetual miracle, cannot be a mere imagi- 
nation of men. Men do not imagine in this way. 
Read St. Augustine's Truth of Religion ; read Abbadie 
— inferior, it is true, to the great saint, but not 
unworthy to be brought into comparison with him. 
Ask the Abbe de Polignac, by the by, how he likes 



MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 8] 

Abbabie. But, my dear cousin, let me beg of you 
to collect your ideas on this great subject, and not to 
permit yourself to be led away so lightly into falsa 
conclusions.' 7 

We call this pretty good sermonizing for a lady 
There is a great deal more to the same effect in dif- 
ferent parts of the letters. It will be remarked that 
there is here nothing of the bigotry to particular 
forms and phrases, which constitutes the religion of so 
many persons. Madame de Sevigne sees and acknow- 
ledges to corruptions existing, not merely in other 
forms of religion, but in that to which she was herself 
by birth and education attached. Her correspondent 
Coulanges, who, like his cousin Bussy, was one of the 
best heads in France — at a song — witnessed the same 
corruptions, and concluded from them that religion must 
be a mere fable. This was also the conclusion drawn 
by the French philosophers of the following century, 
who thought that because St. Denys did not really 
carry his head under his arm from Paris to his own 
abbey, this universal frame must be without a mind — 
as if there were the most remote connection between 
the two propositions. Madame de Sevigne* reasons 
differently. She sees, through the clouds of error 
and corruption, that disfigure its external forms, 
creeds and ceremonies, the beauty of religion itself, 
and feels that a faith which subsists and triumphs in 
the midst of all these corruptions must have the essen- 

6 



82 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

tial characteristics of divinity. Having fortified her- 
self in this conviction, she does not permit it to carry 
her out of the world into convents and penitentiaries j 
nor does she leave it at home, when she goes into 
the world, and disgrace her principles by joining in 
the fashionable vices of the day. She takes her reli- 
gion with her into society, where it enables her to 
hold up to a licentious and frivolous court the edifying 
example of a moral purity, which even foes could 
not venture to impeach, and a cheerful, consistent, 
intelligent piety, graced and made attractive by a 
union with the highest accomplishments and most 
exquisite refinements of civilized life. 

We do not quite sympathize with Madame de Se- 
vigne* in her admiration of Nicole, the Arnauds, and 
the other " gentlemen of Port-Royal." This establish- 
ment, which was a sort of monastery, acquired a 
high reputation from having served for a time as a 
retreat and residence of the great Pascal. His name 
threw a kind of celebrity over the whole community, 
which does not seem to be sustained by any of their 
published works. The Arnauds kept up the contro- 
versy, which he had commenced in his famous Pro- 
vincials between the Molinists and the Jansenists — 
the loose and the strict moralists of the Catholic 
Church ; but being no longer vivified by his genius, 
it degenerated into a caput mortuum of bitter and 
angry pamphlets, which were never much read, and 
are now forgotten. From her great partiality for the 



MADAME DE SEVIGNE*. 83 

Arnauds, and personal intimacy with them, Madame 
de Sevigne has sometimes been called a Jansenist ; 
and it is not improbable that the worldly fortunes of 
her family, which were not very brilliant, were injured 
by this connection ; for the Jesuits were all-powerful 
at Court during the whole period of Louis XIY. But 
even on this subject she exhibits her usual good sense 
and good taste, and, with all her admiration of the Ar- 
nauds and of Port-Royal, never meddles in her letters 
with the Jansenist controversy, but, on the contrary, 
speaks of it, whenever she alludes to it, in a tone of 
pleasantry as a matter in which she felt no interest. 

We must now take leave of Madame de Sevigne\ 
having, we trust, said enough to recommend her to 
the attention of such of our fair readers as were not 
before particularly acquainted with her merits. We 
cannot but notice, in conclusion — if we may venture 
to tack a trite moral to a tedious tale — the strong 
impression that remains upon the mind after a glance 
at the period of Louis XIY., of the prodigious supe- 
riority of literary talent over every other exercise of 
intellect, as a means of conferring permanent dis- 
tinction on its possessors and all with whom they 
are connected. The age of Louis XIY. is universally 
considered as one of the brightest periods in the 
history of civilization. What gave it this splendid pre- 
eminence ? Louis XIY. himself, although, as Madame 
de Sevigne justly remarks, he possessed great qualities 
and eclipsed the glory of most of his predecessors, 



84 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

now comes in for a very moderate share of the atten- 
tion we bestow on the time in which he lived. His 
generals, Cond6, Turenne, Luxemburg, and the rest 
— unquestionably men of distinguished talent — were 
yet in no way superior to the thunderbolts of war 
that have wasted mankind from age to age and are 
now forgotten. His ministers, Fouquet, Colbert, Lou- 
vois, have left no marked traces in history. The 
celebrated beauties that charmed all eyes at the court 
festivals, have long since mouldered into dust. Yet 
we still cling with the deepest interest to the memory 
of the age of Louis XIV. because it was the age of 
Pascal and Corneille, of Racine, Moliere and La Fon- 
taine, of Bossuet, Fenelon, Bourdaloue, Massillon, La 
Brnyere, La Rochefoucault, and Madame de Sevigne\ 
The time will probably come, in the progress of civili- 
zation, when the military and civic glories of this 
period will be still more lightly, because more cor- 
rectly estimated, than they are now. When the King 
who could make war upon Holland, because he was 
offended by the device of a burgomaster's seal, and 
the general who burnt the Palatinate in cold blood, will 
be looked upon — with all their refinement and merit 
of a certain kind, as belonging essentially to the same 
class of semi-barbarians with the Tamei lanes and 
Attilas, the Rolands and the Red Jackets. When the 
Fouquets and Colberts will be considered as possess- 
ing a moral value very little higher than that of the 
squirrels and snakes, which they not inappropriately 



MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 85 

assumed as their emblems. But the maxims of La 
Rochefoucault will never lose their point, nor the 
poetry of Racine its charm. The graceful eloquence 
of Fenelon will flow forever through the pages of 
Telemachus, and the latest posterity will listen with 
as much, or even greater pleasure than their contem- 
poraries to the discourses of Bossuet and Massillon. 
The masterly productions of these great men and their 
illustrious contemporaries, will perpetuate to " the last 
syllable of recorded time " the celebrity which they 
originally conferred upon the period when they lived, 
and crown with a light of perennial and unfading 
glory the age of Louis XIV. 



MARIE LOUISE. 

"Who journeys thus onward, 

Light-hearted and gay, 
As if to a triumph 

She passed on her way ? 
No exile, most surely— 

Not thus do they come, 
Who are leaving behind them 

A heart and a home. 

Can she go so lightly, 

And joyously back, 
Who went to her bridal 

So late o'er this track ? 
Could she smile as when hastening 

To welcoming arms, 
If shut from the circle 

Of home and its charms ? 

Oh, matchless in beauty, 

And kingly in line ! 
No heart of a woman 

Can surely be thine : 



MARIE LOUISE. 87 

Else wouldst thou, this moment, 

Thy husband uncrowned, 
Weep in sackcloth and ashes, 

And sit on the ground. 

Is this, proud Napoleon, 

The pride of thy home ? 
Can this be thy mother, 

pale king of Rome ? 
Alas ! we may mourn thee, 

But pity who can, 
More fickle than woman, 

And falser than man. 

It was well that the exile, 

Shut in by the sea, 
Still might solace his anguish 

By memory of thee — 
Still could keep through all suffering, 

Of body and mind, 
One blest spot in memory 

Where thou wert enshrined ; 

Trusting on in a faith 

Which no time could remove, 
In the strength of thy virtue, 

And depth of thy love ; 
For his heart, but for this, 

In its hardness had been 
As the rocks of the ocean 

That girdled him in. 



88 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

Oh, regally wedded, 

And regally born ! 
Not thy state nor thy beauty 

Can save thee from scorn ; 
And more deeply we mourn thee, 

Content in thy home, 
Than the Emperor exiled, 

Or dead king of Rome. 



SUBURBAN ROMANCE. 



BY CHARLES DICKENS. 



When I became incumbent of the parochial district 
of St. Barnabas, Copenhagen Lanes, I lodged in Pep- 
permint Place. It was then creeping its way into the 
fields, with the apparent determination not to stop till it 
had reached Highgate. The brick and mortar invasion 
had extended to two ranks of houses, which were then 
in all conditions, from neat, snug finish, to cheerless roof- 
lessness. When I went to take the rooms in number one, 
on a drizzling afternoon, my landlord was pleased to 
assure me, while sweeping his arm out of a back 
window over a landscape in the last stage of damp 
decay, that the situation was "uncommonly cheerful." 
The view consisted of a few dismantled garden allot- 
ments ; a superannuated summer-house was lying in an 
attitude of utter despondency against a deserted pigsty ; 
bunches of drooping hollyhocks, broken down by the 
weight of their misfortunes, wept rain-drops ; patches of 
the cabbage and other greens were sicklied over with 
the pale cast of lime and mortar ; and tulips struggled 
up out of their beds between brick-bats, in the lasi 



89 



90 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

agonies of strangulation. This uncommonly "cheerful 
situation" was finished off in the background by a 
damp and ragged hedge ; the whole presenting a vivid 
tableau of the insatiable Ogre, Town, swallowing up the 
passive, pastoral, Country. 

The chief attraction from my sitting-room was a 
clayey slough, in which a constant succession of brick- 
carts were continually stuck during all the working 
hours of the day ; yet the boundary to this prospect 
was far from uninviting. Several of the opposite 
houses were finished and inhabited. The neatest and 
prettiest of them was that immediately facing my room. 
If window curtains were ever made of woven snow, that 
must have been the material of those at the first-floor 
window of that modest habitation — they were so white 
and transparent. There was such variety in their 
arrangement : so much taste in the disposition of the 
crocuses and snow-drops in the window-sill ; such 
evident pleasure taken in concealing the wires of the 
bird cage in impromptu arbors, now of geranium, now 
of myrtle, or else by an intertwining of cut primroses — 
that I was irresistibly reminded of one of those charm- 
ing little cottage windows in the scenes of a French 
vaudeville. Nor was this impression weakened when I 
occasionally espied — but very seldom — between the 
rows of bob-fringe that dangled merrily from the 
curtains, the face of a lovely brunette, framed in ban- 
deaux of jet hair, and illuminated by a pair of piercing 
black eyes. 



SUBURBAN ROMANCE. 91 

What busy eyes they were ! Though I seldom saw 
them, I could see what they were doing all day long j 
for, everything being dark, as if to correspond to them, 
(their owner was in mourning), I could observe the 
plainer how the little lady in black employed herself 
behind the film of white curtain. She was incessantly 
bending over a frame, and I could guess, from the 
motion of the arm nearest the window, that she 
embroidered, or did something of that sort, all day long. 
Now and then the hand appeared to move higher 
than the frame, and I supposed, from the angle of the 
elbow, that she was pressing it against her over- wrought 
eyes. Poor girl ! no wonder if they ached ; for, from 
morning till evening, every day, except Sundays, during 
all that cold and cheerless spring, she was to be seen in 
busy motion. Except on Sunday mornings — -I suppose 
to go to church — she never went abroad ; and no other 
living soul was ever observed in her room. 

In the course of months, my observations of the 
captivating Silhouette — so I had nicknamed the little 
black profile — were more frequent than polite. The 
delicious little gauze of mystery which half-veiled her, 
piqued my curiosity ; and I could safely indulge in it, as 
my draperies were much less aerial than hers. Though 
the east wind blew with continued intensity, and it was 
quite an effort to leave one's fireside, she was never, 
during daylight, away from her window. Sometimes I 
could distinguish that she paused, leant her head on her 
hand, and gazed with earnest intensity directly under 



92 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

where I sat. Then, as if suddenly caught in the act, 
she would turn like lightning to her frame, and the little 
black arm would move up and down with unusual 
rapidity. There was a curious circumstance connected 
with these fits of abstraction and starts of work : I 
remarked that they happened inversely to the proceed- 
ings of my clever young landlord below (an inlayer, 
carver, and cabinet-maker) ; for, during the moments of 
my Silhouette's fascination, his saw, his chisel, or plane, 
or hammer were in full and noisy operation ; and it was 
exactly at the instant that either of these tools were laid 
down and the sound ceased, that my little lady resumed 
her work. I was convinced one morning that this coin- 
cidence was no mere fancy. I had by this time got used 
to the noises in the shop below, and could distinguish, 
on the forenoon referred to, that friend Bevil was mak- 
ing, at each stroke of his plane, very long shavings. 
While trying to guess, from the sounds, the length of 
the plank he was smoothing, I observed the damsel 
opposite tracing an embroidery pattern against the glass. 
The tracing goes on well enough for awhile ; but, 
presently, the left hand is lifted to the little head, the 
tip of the elbow rests against the window-frame, the 
tracing hangs against the glass by the point of the pencil 
held in the other hand ; and the black eyes pour their 
rays straight into the window below me. The long 
shavings are turned off with vigorous regularity : but, 
hark! — the plane is suddenly arrested half way! — and 
see, the tracing and pencil instantaneously drap from 



SUBURBAN ROMANCE. 93 

the glass opposite, and the piquant little artist vanishes 
like magic from the window. Presently the planing 
goes on again with a slow and pensive irregularity that 
makes me feel quite low-spirited. 

Although mine was a pastoral as well as an ecclesias- 
tical charge of the St. Barnabas district, and I was 
bound to watch over my flock, yet it may be said that 
such close scrutiny of my neighbors as that which I have 
confessed was scarcely dignified in a clergyman ; but it 
must be remembered that what I have here brought 
together in a short space was spread over several 
months. Nor did the arduous duties of a new district 
admit of much idle window gazing. My church was 
only a temporary one, and I made it my business to 
call, in succession, on my parishioners, not only to make 
myself personally acquainted with each, but to invite 
them to worship. I began this mission at home ; for, 
although my landlord's mother was a regular attendant 
at church, the son never once made his appearance 
within its walls. 

Old Mrs. Bevil was a large old lady of painfully 
timid temperament, whose existence was passed in one 
of the sunken kitchens, and whose mission on earth was 
apparently to cook glue for her son, vouchsafing any of 
the time to be spared between the steaming of the pots 
in attendance upon me. One Saturday morning T 
expressed my regret to her that so excellent and indus- 
trious a son should appear to be negligent to his Sab- 
bath duties. 



94 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

" He isn't!" said Mrs. Bevil, sideling towards the 
door, and feeling, with a hand outstretched behind her, 
for the handle. 

I should mention that Mrs. Bevil was so much " put 
out " when spoken to by any one above her in station, 
that when you showed symptoms of engaging her in 
talk, she winced and made artful efforts to escape — like 
a child when a dentist exhibits his instruments. 

" What church does he go to ?" 

II French Protestant.". 

" Indeed ! then he is conversant with French !" 

Mrs. Bevil had by this time found the door-knob, 
and had turned it. Her confusion was so great, that 
her face — never very pale — glowed like a live coal. 

" Of course," I repeated, " as your son attends a 
French place of worship, he understands French." 

In the midst of her bewilderment Mrs. Bevil stam- 
mered — 

"Yes — French polishing." 

I dared not smile, lest the ignorant old soul's shame 
should overwhelm her ; so in order to change the sub- 
ject without actually doing so, I asked if she knew any- 
thing of the mysterious young lady opposite ? 

The old woman courtesied herself backwards into 
the opening of the door, and having felt that retreat 
was practicable, she said, "Please, sir; no, sir;" and 
vanished with the rapidity of a mouse, let mt of a lion's 
cage. 

It was not difficult to guess why young Bevil pre- 



SUBURBAN ROMANCE. 95 

ferred the French church to my own. I had never 
doubted that the charming embroideress opposite was 
a foreigner. She worshipped in a language she under- 
stood best ; and her admirer — more in obedience to his 
silent passion than his spiritual duties — followed her 
thither to worship her. On expatiating one day, how- 
ever, on the sinfulness of Sabbath-breaking, he partially 
disarmed me by owning that he had been assiduously 
learning French in order to understand and join in the 
service. I made not the slightest allusion to the charm- 
ing Silhouette ; for I saw from his nervous and blushing 
manner, that it was too deep an affair with him to 
be lightly touched. I ascertained that, although he 
saw his adored daily, and followed her weekly to church, 
he never had courage to speak to her, or to address 
her in any way whatever. 

My interest in this absorbing case of silent love 
deepened daily. I pitied young Bevil. Supposing, 
after he had proceeded to the extremity of avowed 
courtship, his idol should prove a wicked little French 
coquette, and jilt him ? Such a presentiment did not 
want foundation. Although the summer had arrived 
— and warmer, more congenial weather I never remem- 
ber — the Silhouette disappeared entirely from behind 
the fairy curtains. During all the cold weather, when 
she must have shivered to sit there, she was never 
absent ; but now, when the window is the only endura- 
ble part of a room, she is utterly invisible. Is she 
skillfully manceuvering Love's delicatp sensitive tele- 



96 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

graph, conscious that she has secured her victim ; and 
now, after the manner of finished coquettes, does she 
""eave him to pine in the throes of hopeless despair ? 
Or, doubts she the truth and ardency of his love, as 
expressed by his silent watchings of her window, and 
by his regular church-goings ; and does she disappear 
from his longing, loving looks to lure him to the overt 
act — a verbal declaration ? If the latter, her tactics 
will fail. Young Bevil's passion is not a mere flash of 
romance ; it is earnest and practical. He does not 
stand idly gazing, and sighing, and hoping, and despair- 
ing. The more he loves the harder he works. Until 
he has placed himself in a position to speak to her with 
confidence as to the future, he will be silent. 

Here I am probably asked, how could I know all 
this ? I answer, from substantial evidence. When one 
sees a man running a race, it is certain that there is, far 
or near, a goal. Young Bevil raced manfully, and the 
winning-post he kept in view was matrimony. Early 
and late his tools were audible, not only to obtain 
capital in money, but to provide property of his own 
handy-work. When I first took his lodgings, they were 
scantily furnished ; but the rooms were rapidly filled 
up ; evidently not for my use and pleasure. The 
capacious tea-caddy, curiously inlaid and splendidly 
mounted, did not signify much to me ; neither was 
I ever likely to require the Gothic work-table that I 
found one evening slid, as if by accident, into a recess ; 
and to what earthly use could a bachelor in lodgings put 



SUBURBAN ROMANCE. 97 



that frame on swivels, studded all around with cribbage 
pegs, that looked like a swing-cheval without its glass ? 
In short, every addition to the garniture of the apart- 
ments was of the feminine gender. I looked upon 
these novelties as so many notices to quit ; for I did 
not doubt that the rooms were being quietly prepared 
for a more cherished occupant. This supposition was 
confirmed, when, curiosity prompting me to examine 
the work-table, I saw, exquisitely inlaid in cypher on 
the inside of the lid, the word " Manette." 

All this while, the Silhouette remained obstinately 
invisible. For a few Sundays she continued to go to 
church, but so thickly veiled that a sight of her face 
was impossible. Still he followed ; but refrained from 
speaking. The time had not come. He would not offer 
his rough but honest hand while yet without a home to 
which it could lead her. 

Poor Bevil had soon to live on, not only in silent, 
but in sightless despair ; the little black profile ceased 
to appear, not only behind her snowy transparencies, 
but bodily on Sundays. From this time Bevil's intel- 
ligent, but sad and thoughtful features struck me with 
pity ; I could not but see that he was staking his hopes 
— his very existence — on a cast, which might turn up 
a deadly blank. 

On one occasion my hopes revived for him. It 
was towards the close of a lovely summer's day. The 
whiteness of the gossamer curtains made them dazzle 
in the sun. The figure in black approached ; and after 

7 



98 JOSEPHINE GALLERT. 

a hesitating interval appeared in distinct outline close 
behind the gauze. All this while, the sharp cuts of 
BeviPs chisel were audible in busy succession under 
me. The Silhouette's eyes only, appeared just above 
the short curtain, darting a long, devouring gaze upon 
the toiler ; they were red ; a handkerchief was pressed 
closely to her face. The chisel goes on chipping away, 
without one intermission. I would give a quarter's 
stipend if Bevil would only be idle for a second, and 
look up ; for as the gazer strains her eyes upon him, 
tears pour out of them, and sparkle in the sun like 
falling diamonds. Presently she sinks into a chair, 
as if overcome with grief, and disappears. With this 
anguish, whatever its immediate cause, I felt certain 
that Bevil was connected with it. 

" Surely this mystery is not impenetrable. I will 
unravel it." Accordingly, next morning, I took our 
opposite neighbors out of the regular order of my 
visits, called, and questioned the woman who rented 
the house. I learnt that the girl's name was Manette. 
She was an orphan ; her father, a French teacher, had 
died recently in a hospital. Her embroidery was fetched 
and carried to and from the warehouse by my inform- 
ant's husband. Her industry was extraordinary, and she 
earned a comfortable subsistence. I asked to see her, 
but was told she admitted no person whatever into her 
room. Of late, especially, she concealed her face, with 
an apparent dread of being recognized by strangers. 

My inquiries, therefore, darkened rather than cleared 



SUBURBAN ROMANCE. 99 

up the mystery. As I left the house, I observed that 
my landlord had been watching. He looked wistfully 
into my face as I passed him on the door-step, and I 
answered his silent appeal by desiring him to follow me 
to my room. 

A very short conversation proved that all my 
observations and deductions had been correctly made. 
He owned everything. It was painful to see a fine, 
muscular, handsome man, suffused with the shame — 
honest shame though it was — trembling with the weak- 
ness we only expect from young impulsive girls. I 
reasoned with him. I showed him the full risk he 
ran in nurturing so perfect an ideal out of a mere 
image ; for to him Manette was nothing more. I 
pointed out the utter uselessness of his self-imposed 
penance. She might be all he thought her ; she might 
be everything the reverse. How could he know with- 
out some acquaintanceship ? It would be madness to 
give rashly a pledge of matrimony without some pro- 
bation. 

In the end he promised to try and see Manette the 
following day ; and, descending to his shop, he worked 
away harder than ever. 

Even now I see Bevil as, next morning, he stood at 
the door opposite. His lips quiver ; but his brow ex- 
presses a firm, but anxious purpose. The woman who 
admits him tells him something which surprises and 
disappoints him. Manette, for the first time for a 
month, has gone out. The next day was Sunday, and 



100 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

the lover abstained from intruding himself. On the 
Monday he had as little success. In the evening he 
consulted me as to what he had better do. Should he 
write ? 

. I advised him by no means to commit himself ; and 
offered, if he would wait, I would use the influence of 
my cloth to obtain an interview for him. When 
the morning came, Bevil desired to accompany me. 
He would, he said, go himself ; but would feel com- 
forted and fortified by the sanction of my presence. 

Accordingly we sallied forth across the road at nine 
the next morning. I would not wait to hear the answer 
of the landlady ; but pushing by the driver of a spring- 
cart that had just stopped at the house, went straight 
up to Manette's door. Bevil followed. I knocked ; no 
answer. Not a sound within. I knocked again, and 
quietly called her by name. Utter silence. I then tried 
the door ; it yielded, and we entered. 

The picture of neatness and prettiness which I had 
drawn as existing behind those dainty muslin curtains 
was not realized. It was indeed reversed. The room 
was in the greatest confusion, and untenanted. " Why, 
you see, sir,' 7 said the woman of the house who had 
ushered the carter up behind us, " Madam'selle went 
away the first thing yesterday morning. She sold her 
bits of things to the broker (you'll have to get the 
sofa bed out of the window, Mr. Bracket), and never 
give us no notice in a regular way (now mind the walls 
with them saucepans), leastways not a week's : but 



SUBURBAN ROMANCE. 101 

my husband never went to charge her, poor thing, for 
she paid as punctually as the Monday morning cum — 
allays." 

" Has she left her present address ?" I asked. 

11 Oh dear no, quite contra-ry. Says she to me, 
says she — leastways as well as I could understand her 
French brogue, and she had her han'kercher a kivering 
of her face — 'Mrs. Blinkinson/ says she, 'don't,' says 
she, ' answer no questions as may be asked about me. 
I am a-going,' says she, ' to where I hope nobody may 
find me out.' And then she pulled the street door to, 
and I never see her more — and never shall." 

I looked at Bevil. He was shivering as if an icy 
chill had struck to his heart. He looked around the 
room slowly, vacantly. The bird was lying at the bot- 
tom of its cage — dead. The flowers, no longer tended, 
were drooping. He stretched forth his trembling 
hand, and, plucking a geranium, put it into his bosom. 
He then turned, and, without speaking, descended the 
stairs. With unsteady gait he entered his own house. 

For more than a week I missed the sounds from 
below. Bevil had gone straight to his bed-room, and 
had not left it since. His mother now, instead of tend- 
ing him with glue-pots, was constantly on the stairs 
with broths, and coffee, and tea, and a variety of other 
sloppy sustentation ; but her son would partake of them 
very sparingly. I determined to rouse him, and 
advised that, as he would not or could not work, an 
active search after the lost damsel was better than 



102 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

stolid, inactive grief. This roused him and he followed 
my advice. 

Weary days and weary weeks were spent in the 
search. The cunning Silhouette eluded him as if she 
had been an Ombre Chinois. Bevil first addressed him- 
self to the shop for which Manette had worked. The 
master of it said that he never saw Manette but once, 
and then she came with specimens of her embroi- 
dery, to get more. It was so good that he had em- 
ployed her ever since, and was both surprised and cha- 
grined at her sudden desertion. He had, through her 
landlord, offered her a good salary to work at his house, 
and had hoped she would accept. Her strange disap- 
pearance was therefore the more unaccountable. 

The clergyman of the French church, when Bevil 
sought him, was as surprised as her lover at Manette's 
absence from service and communion. In the latter, he 
said, she was a regular and deeply impressed partaker. 
He could give no information. Neither could the 
officers of the hospital, where the girl's father had 
died in the winter (of whom Bevil also inquired), give 
him comfort. 

" There is nothing for it," I told him one day, " but 
time and work." 

He did after a time resume his work, but the sounds 
given out from his bench made me melancholy. His 
tools were taken up, used, and laid down with a 
slow, intermittent apathy, which showed that the heart 
and the hands did not go together. 



SUBURBAN ROMANCE. 103 

Work, on' the contrary, grew so fast on my hands 
that I hardly had time for sleep. My successor to the 
curacy I had left in Southwark was taken ill, and, be- 
sides my own duty, I had volunteered to do a part of 
his. This occasionally consisted in administering conso- 
lation and prayer to the inmates of one of the Borough 
hospitals. 

During one of my visits to the female ward, I was 
attracted by a few words which fell from the clinical lec- 
turer who was addressing a knot of pupils standing at the 
bed on a case of tumor of the face. He had, in fact 
(warming with his subject), glided from an explanation 
of the operation which had been performed and of the 
after treatment, to an involuntary eulogium on the 
beauty of the patient, which the consequences of the 
disease and its remedy tended to impair. I got a peep 
at the damsel between the shoulders of a couple of the 
shortest of the listeners, and saw just above the bed- 
clothes (which were held up with extreme rigidity 
and care to conceal the lower part of the face), a pair 
of familiar black eyes. They quite thrilled through me. 
The students were dismissed ; and I overheard a sweet 
voice ask " if zat scar " 

11 Don't let it trouble you for one instant/' said Dr. 
Fleam, as he left the bedside ;. " it will hardly be visible, 
and in a week you will be as well — and as pretty — as 
ever." 

I looked again. Those piercing black eyes met 
mine point-blank. There was a scream, smothered by 



104: JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

the bed-clothes — under which the head was instantly 
popped. 

But that was enough. I felt convinced that Manette 
was found. 

About a month from that date there was joy at 
No. 1 Peppermint Place. It is November ; on one side 
of my fire-place sit Bevil and Manette. Old Mrs. Bevil 
has gradually pushed her chair back to the window ; 
and, bit by bit, has nibbled the folds of the curtain, 
until she is completely hidden behind it in that com- 
fortable obscurity in which she alone delights. They 
had assembled to hear a lecture from me. 

" Personal vanity," I began, with all the solemnity 
to be invoked in the presence of a pair of eyes which 
sparkled so with joy that it seemed impossible for their 
mistress to school and temper them to the occasion — 
" the vanity of mere personal comeliness had nearly 
wrecked the happiness of both of you. Because you, 
Manette, were afflicted with a mere tumor that dis- 
torted for a time that which you seemed to cherish 
more than your worldly welfare — your beauty — you 
sold your worldly goods and deserted your home, and 
means of subsistence, rather than the deformity should 
be seen by one whom you secretly loved. Had you no 
confidence in the attractions which never fade, that you 
depended solely upon those which, despite all your 
efforts, will assuredly pass away ? 

" Non" said Manette, lifting her eyelids with a 
sort of timid courage. " He loved me only for my face 



SUBURBAN ROMANCE. 105 

— he 'ad nevare spoken. When he saw and loved my 
face, it was comme ilfaut. Eh, bien ! if he 'ad seen my 
face, when it was horriV disfigure, would he not have 
hate me ? Oui" 

A pardonable impulse threw Bevil's arm over the 
hack of Manette's chair, as he exclaimed — 

" Oh! no, no." 

" You were, I must say, both to blame. Bevil for 
timidity and Manette for rashness," I remarked. 

Manette looked down on the prettiest little toe in 
the district of St. Barnabas, as it pointed itself to 
trace in outline the pattern of the hearth-rug, and 
went into a long explanation of her motives in the 
most delicious broken French. She was quite alone in 
the world, and the pain and hideous tumor in her face 
prevented her from working — she saw ruin, and nothing 
but ruin before her. The day her bird died, she felt 
so desolate, that she determined to go to a hospital, 
in order to have the operation performed. On recover- 
ing, if she had been much disfigured, she intended 
never to see Bevil more. She had not courage to 
bear the disappointment which he might have inflicted, 
by the altered sentiments she anticipated in her lover, 
in consequence of her altered appearance ; and she pre- 
ferred the certainty of trying to forget him. If she 
were perfectly cured, she intended again to return 
to her old lodging, and by hard work to regain her 
furniture. 



106 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

The end of this, like most other romances, was 
marriage. With marriage, as is well known, all mys- 
teries vanish. Manette's story was this : Her father 
was a political refugee from the storm of 1848 ; he had 
been a staunch Orleanist Deputy in the French Cham- 
ber, and had to fly, with his daughter, for his life. In 
England he taught his native tongue as a means of live- 
lihood, till overtaken by illness. Then Manette prac- 
tised an accomplishment she was proficient in, with so 
much success that she supported her father till his death. 
She knew the time would come when the family pro- 
perty they possessed, near Bordeaux, would be re- 
stored, and she did not wish to let her situation be 
known, especially to the unhappy family at Claremont. 
Hence, she kept herself a recluse till the terrible disap- 
pointment drove her to the hospital. 

I was not allowed the honor of officiating, the 
minister of the French Protestant chapel having been 
preferred. Of course I was obliged to remove to another 
lodging. 

Nor did the Bevils stay long in Peppermint Place. 
Their united talents in the decorative arts did not 
loug remain hidden. They removed to a fine house 
near Cavendish Square, and worked for the first nobility. 
A label in the window tells you that there ' ' They 
speak French." 

Passing the shop the other day, I was surprised 
to find another name over the door. The owner of 






SUBURBAN ROMANCE. 107 

it told me that Mr. Bevil had gone to live in France, 
in order to superintend his wife's estate on the Ga- 
ronne. It appeared, then, that my piquant Silhou- 
ette had regained her patrimony. The next holiday 
I get I shall certainly pay them a visit. 



CHARLOTTE CORDAY. 

Who is this, with calm demeanor, 
And with form of matchless grace, 

Wearing yet the modest beauty 
Of her childhood in her face ? 

Close the white folds of her kerchief 
All her neck and bosom wrap, 

And her soft brown hair is hidden 
Underneath her Norman cap. 

And what doth she in such garments, 
And with such a modest mien, 

Here among the high-born beauties 
Of the court of Josephine ? 



This is she who left the convent, 
For the fierce and restless throngs, 

Who were gathering head for battle, 
To avenge her country's wrongs. 



108 



CHARLOTTE CORDaY. 109 

This is she who to its rescue, 

Was the foremost to advance- 
She who struck to death the tyrant 

Of her well beloved France. 

She who had the martyr's spirit 

To perform as she had planned ; 

Taking thus her life's sweet promise 

In her own presumptuous hand. 

k 

All the while, herself deceiving, 
With this dangerous sub tie try, 
" Evil, surely, is not evil 

If a good is gained thereby. 

" If I perish for my country, 
Is not this a righteous deed ? 
If I save the lives of thousands, 
What is it that one should bleed V* 

So, arraigned at the tribunal, 
This alone was her reply — 
" It was I who did this murder, 
And I do not fear to die." 

Therefore, with her simple garments, 

And her unassuming port, 
Have they placed her lovely picture 

Near the beauties of the Court : 



110 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

Therefore pitying admiration, 

More than blame for her we feel — 

Hers was noble and heroic, 
Though it was mistaken zeal. 

And so long as France shall honor 
Those whose blood for her is shed, 

Shall the name of Charlotte Corday 
Live among the martyred dead ! 



THE FOUNTAIN VERY FAR DOWN. 

BY VIRGINIA F. TOWNSEND. 

" I don't believe it," said my cousm Ned, who was 
passing his college vacation at our house, and there was 
a world of unwritten skepticism in the air with which he 
dashed down the paper over whose damp columns his 
eyes had been travelling for the previous half hour. 

"You see, Cousin Nelly," continued Ned, getting up 
and pacing the long old-fashioned parlor with quick, ner- 
vous strides, "it's all sheer nonsense to talk about these 
doors in every human heart. It sounds very pretty and 
pathetic in a story, I'll admit ; but so do a great many 
other things which reason and actual experience entirely 
repudiate. There are hearts — alas ! that their name 
should be legion — where ' far away up ' there is no 
door to be opened, and ' far away down ' are no deeps 
to be fathomed. Now don't, Cousin Nelly, level another 
such rebuking glance at me from those brown eyes, for I 
have just thought of a case illustrative of my theory. 
Don't you remember Miss Stebbins, the old maid, who 

lived at the foot of the hill, and how I picked a rose for 

in 



112 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

you one morning which had climbed over her fence into 
the road, and so, of course, became ' public property V 
Faugh ! I shall never forget the tones of the virago's 
voice, or the scowl on her forehead as she sallied out of 
the front door and shook her hand at me. A woman 
who could refuse a half withered flower to a little child, 
I wonder that roses could blossom on her soil ! At the 
' smiting of the rod/ no waters could flow out of such 
a granite heart. In the moral desert of such a charac- 
ter, no fertilizing stream can make its way." 

I did not answer Cousin Ned's earnest, eloquent 
tones, for just then there was the low rap of visitors at 
the parlor door ; but I have always thought there was a 
good angel in the room while he was speaking, and that 
it flew straight to Miss Stebbins, and looking down, 
down, very far down in her heart, he saw a fountain 
there, rank weeds grew all around it, the seal of years 
was on its lip, and the dust of time deep on the seal ; 
but the angel smiled, as it floated upwards, and mur- 
mured, "I shall return and remove the seal, and the 
waters will flow." 

Stern and grim sat Miss Stebbins at her work, one 
summer afternoon. The golden sunshine slept and 
danced in its play-place in the corner, and broke into 
a broad laugh along the ceiling, and a single beam, 
bolder than the rest, crept to the hem of Miss Stebbins's 
gown, and looked up with a timid, loving smile in her 
face, such as no human being ever wore when looking 
there. 



THE FOUNTAIN VERY FAR DOWN. 113 

Poor Miss Stebbins ! those stern, harsh features only 
daguerreotyped too faithfully the desolate, arid heart 
beneath them ; and that heart, with its dry fountain, 
was a true type of her life, with the one flower of human 
affection which had blossomed many years before along 
its bleak, barren highway. 

She never seemed to love anybody, unless it was her 
brother William, who was a favorite with everybody ; 
but he went to sea, and had never been heard of since. 
Sally had always been a stray sheep among the family ; 
but dark hours, and at last death, came upon all the 
rest, and so the homestead fell into her hands. Such 
was the brief verbal history of Miss Stebbins's life, which 
I received from Aunt Mary, who closed it there, in rigid 
adherence to her favorite maxim, never to speak evil of 
her neighbors. 

But, that summer afternoon, there came the patter 
of children's feet along the gravel-walk which led to Miss 
Stebbins's front door ; and, at the same moment, the 
angel with golden-edged wings came down from its 
blue-sky home into Miss Stebbins's parlor. 

She raised her head and saw them, two weary-look- 
ing little children, with golden hair and blue eyes, stand- 
ing hand in hand under the little portico, and then that 
old termagant scowl darkened her forehead, and she 
asked, with a sharp, disagreeable note in her voice, like 
the raw breath in the northeast wind — 

"Wa-all! I should like to know what you want 
standing there ?" 

8 



1.14 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

li Please, ma'am," said the boy, in a timid, entreat- 
ing voice, which ought to have found its way straight 
into any heart, "little sister and I feel very tired, for 
we have walked a long way. Will you let us sit down 
on the step and rest a little while ?" 

"No; I can't have children loafing round on my 
premises," said Miss Stebbins, with the same vinegar 
sharpness of tone which had characterized her preceding 
reply. Moreover, the sight of any of the miniature spe- 
cimens of her race seemed always fated to arouse her 
belligerent propensities. " So just take yourselves off; 
and the quicker, the better 'twill be for you." 

" Don't stay any longer, Willy. I am afraid," whis- 
pered the little girl, with a tremor rippling through her 
voice, as she pulled significantly at her brother's coat 
sleeve. 

"Willy! Willy! That was your brother's name; 
don't you remember?" the angel bent down and whis- 
pered very softly in the harsh woman's ear ; and all the 
time his hand was gliding down, down in her heart, 
searching for that hidden fountain. " You must have 
been just about that little girl's age when you and he 
used to go trudging down into the meadows together to 
find sweet flagroot. And you used to keep tight hold of 
his hand, just as she does. Oh, how tired you used to 
get ! Don't you remember that old brown house, where 
nobody lived but starved rats and a swarm of wasps, 
who made their nest there in the summer-time ? And 
you used to sit down on the old step, which the worms 



THE FOUNTAIN VERY FAR DOWN. 115 

had eaten in so many places, and rest there. How he 
loved you ! and how careful he was always to give you 
the best seat ! and, then, he never spoke one cross word 
to you, if everybody else did. Now, if you should let 
those children sit down and rest, just as you and Willy 
did on the old brown step, you could keep a sharp eye 
on them, to see they didn't get into any mischief." 

The angel must have said all this in a very little 
time, for the children had only reached the gravel-walk 
again, when Miss Stebbins called out to them ; and, this 
time, that spiteful little note in her voice was not quite 
so prominent — 

" Here, you may sit right down on that corner, a lit- 
tle while ; but, mind you, don't stir ; for, if you do, 
you'll have to budge." 

"Little sister," said the boy, in a low tone, after 
they were seated, " lay your head here, and try to go to 
sleep." 

The little girl laid her head, with its shower of 
golden bright curls, on her brother's breast ; but, the 
next moment, she raised it, saying — 

11 I can't sleep, brother, I'm so thirsty." 

" Don't you remember that day you and Willy went 
into the woods after blackberries, and how you lost 
your way groping in the twilight of the forest ?" again 
whispered the angel, with his hand feeling all the time 
for the fountain. " You found an old lightning-blasted 
tree, and you sat down on it, and he put his arm round 
you just so, and said. ' Try and go to sleep, little 



116 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

sister.' But you couldn't, you were so thirsty ; for you 
had walked full three miles. Who knows but what those 
children have, too ?" 

There was a little pause after the angel had said this, 
and then Miss Stebbins rose up and went into her pan- 
try, where the shelves were all of immaculate whiteness, 
and she could see her face in the brightly scoured tin. 
She brought out a white pitcher, and, going into the 
garden, filled it at the spring. Returning, she poured 
some of the cool contents into a cup which stood on the 
table, and carried it to the children ; and she really held 
it to the little girl's lips all the time she was drinking. 

Farther and farther down in the heart of the woman 
crept the hand of the angel ; nearer and nearer to the 
fountain it drew. 

Miss Stebbins went back to her sewing, but, some- 
how, her fingers did not fly as nimbly as usual. The 
memories of bygone years were rising out of their 
mouldy sepulchres ; but all freshly they came before her, 
with none of the grave's rust and dampness upon them. 

" That little boy's eyes, when he thanked you for the 
water, looked just as Willy's used to," once more whis- 
pered the angel, bending down close to Miss Stebbins's 
ear. ''And his hair looks like Willy's too, as he sits 
there with that sunbeam brightening its gold, and his 
arm thrown so lovingly around his sister's waist. 
There ! did you see how wistfully he looked up at the 
grapes, whose purple sides are turned towards him as 
they hang over the portico ? How Willy used to love 



THE FOUNTAIN VERY FAR DOWN. 117 

grapes ! And how sweet your bowls of bread and milk 
used to taste, after one of your rambles into the woods ! 
If those children have walked as far as you did — and 
don't you see the little boy's coat and the little girl's 
faded dress are all covered with dust — they must be very 
hungry, as well as tired and thirsty. Don't you remem- 
ber that apple-pie you baked this morning ? I never saw 
a pie done to a finer brown in my life. How sweet it would 
taste to those little tired things, if they could only eat a 
piece here in the parlor, where the flies and the sun 
wouldn't keep tormenting them all the time !" 

A moment after Miss Stebbins had stolen with noise- 
less step to her pantry, and, cutting out two generous 
slices from her apple-pie, she placed them in saucers, 
returned to the front door, and said to the children — 

" You may come in here, and sit down on the stools 
by the fire-place and eat some pie ; but you must mind 
and not drop any crumbs on the floor." 

It was very strange, but that old harsh tone had 
almost left her voice. The large, tempting slices were 
placed in the little hands eagerly lifted up to receive 
them ; and at that moment, out from the lip of the 
fountain, out from the dust which lay heavy upon its 
seal, there came a single drop, and it fell down upon 
Miss Stebbins's heart. It was the first which had fallen 
there for years. Ah, the angel had found the fountain 
then! 

The softened woman went back to her seat and the 
angel did not bend down and whisper in her ear again ; 



118 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

but all the time his hand was busy, very busy at its 
work. 

11 Where is your home, children 1" inquired Miss 
Stebbins, after she had watched for a while, with a new, 
pleasant enjoyment, the children, as they dispatched 
with hungry avidity their pie. 

"Mary and I haven't any home now. We had one 
once before papa died, a great way over the sea," 
answered the boy. 

" And where are you going now ? and what brought 
you and your little sister over the sea?" still farther 
queried the now interested woman. 

" Why, you see, ma'am, just before papa died, he 
called old Tony to him — now, Tony was black, and 
always lived with us — ' Tony/ said he, ' I am going to 
die, and you know I have lost everything, and the child- 
ren will be all alone in the world. But, Tony, I had a 
sister once that I loved, and she loved me ; and, though 
I haven't seen her for a great many years, still I know 
she loves me, if she's living, just as well as she did when 
she and I used to go hand in hand through the apple- 
orchard to school ; and, Tony, when I'm dead and 
buried, I want you to sell the furniture, and take the 
money it brings you and carry the children back to 
New England. You'll find her name and the place she 
used to live in a paper — which anybody'll read for you — 
in the drawer there. And, Tony, when you find her, 
just take Willy and Mary to her, and tell her I was their 
father and that I sent them to her on my death-bed, 



THE FOUNTAIN VERY FAR DOWN. 119 

and asked her to be a mother to them for my sake. It'll 
be enough, Tony, to tell her that.' And Tony cried 
real loud, and he said, ' Massa, if I forget one word of 
what you've said, may God forget me.' 

11 Weil, papa died, and, after he was buried, Tony 
brought little sister and me over the waters. But, 
before we got here, Tony was taken sick with the 
fever, and he died a little while after the ship reached 
the land and they had carried him on shore. But, just 
before he died, he called me to him and put a piece of 
paper in my hand. * Don't lose it, Willy,' he said, 
1 for poor Tony 's going, and you'll have to find the way 
to your aunt's all alone. The money's all spent, too, 
and they say it's a good hundred miles to the place 
where she lived. But keep up a good heart, and ask 
the folks the way, and for something to eat when you're 
hungry ; and don't walk too many miles a day, 'cause 
little sister ain't strong. Perhaps somebody '11 help 
you on with a ride, or let you sleep in their house 
nights. Now don't forget, Willy ; and shake hands the 
last time with poor Tony.' 

" After that, we stayed at the inn till the next 
day, when they buried Tony ; and, when they asked 
us what we were going to do, we told them we were 
going to our aunt's, for papa had sent us to her, 
and then they let us go. When we asked folks the 
way, they told us, though they always stared, and 
sometimes shook their heads. We got two rides, and 
always a good place to sleep. They said our aunt 



120 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

lived round here ; but, we got so tired walking, we had 
to stop." 

11 And what was your father's name ?" asked Miss 
Stebbins,. and, somehow, there was a choking in her 
throat, and the hand of the angel was placed on the 
fountain as she spoke. 

"William Stebbins ; and our aunt's name was Sally 
Stebbins. Please, ma'am, do you know her ?" 

Off, at that moment, came the seal, and out leaped 
a fresh, blessed tide of human affection, and fell down 
upon the barren heart-soil that grew fertile in a mo- 
ment. 

" William ! my dear brother William !" cried Miss 
Stebbins, as she sprang towards the children with 
outstretched arms, and tears raining fast down her 
cheeks. " Oh, for your sake, I will be a mother to 
them !" 

A year had passed away ; college vacation had come 
again, and once more Cousin Ned was at our house. 
In the summer gloaming we went to walk, and our 
way lay past Miss Stebbins' cottage. As we drew 
near the wicket, the sound of merry child-laughter 
rippled gleefully to our ears, and a moment after, 
from behind that very rose-tree so disagreeably asso- 
ciated with its owner in Cousin Ned's mind, bounded 
two golden-haired children. 

" Come, Willy ! Mary ! you have made wreaths of 
my roses until they are well-nigh gone. You must 
gather violets after this." 



THE FOUNTAIN VERY FAR DOWN. 121 

11 Mirabile dictn /" ejaculated Cousin Ned. " Is 
that the woman who gave me such a blessing a long 
time ago, for plucking half a withered rose from that 
very tree ?" 

" The very same, Cousin Ned,' 7 I answered ; and 
then I told him of the change which had come over 
the harsh woman, of her love, her gentleness, and pa- 
tience for the orphan children of her brother ; and that, 
after all, there was a fountain very far down in her 
heart, as there surely was in everybody's, if we could 
only find it. 

"Well, Cousin Nelly," said Ned, "I'll agree to 
become a convert to your theory without further de- 
murring, if you'll promise to tell me where to find a 
hidden fountain' that lies very far down in a dear little 
somebody's heart, and whose precious waters are gush- 
ing only for me." 

There was a glance, half arch, half loving, from 
those dark, handsome eyes, which made me think 
Cousin Ned knew he would not have to go very far 
to find it. 



MADAME ROLAND. 

A mien of modest loveliness, 

A brow on which no shadow lies, 

And woman's soul of truthfulness 
Outlooking from soft hazel eyes : 

Thy placid features only show, 
The happy mother, faithful wife, 

Not her whose fate it was to know 
All strange vicissitudes of life. 

Unnoticed in thy youthful days 
It was thy happy lot to move, 

Brightening life's unobtrusive ways 
With the sweet ministries of love, 

And learning the great truths of life, 
That best are learned in solitude. 

But only in its after strife 

Are ever proved or understood ! 



123 




!i: 



'lift im 



: M 






MADAME ROLAND. 123 

That toiling early, toiling late, 
For others, is our highest bliss — 

Man even, in his best estate, 

Hath no more happiness than this. 

Such truth it was, that even there, 

Where reigned the prison's gloom and chill, 

Could keep thee wholly from despair, 
And make thee toil for others still, 

Till thine own sorrows half forgot, 

Thy noblest sacrifice was shown, 
In words and deeds for those whose lot 

Was far more wretched than thine own. 

Yet well for thee our tears may flow, 

Though high thy name emblazoned stands, 

Thou, with a woman's heart, couldst know 
No life that woman's heart demands. 

Happier than thou, with fame and wealth, 
Is she who cheers earth's humblest place ; 

Leaving no picture of herself, 
Save in a daughter's modest face. 



"CATCH THE SUNSHINE." 

BY MARION HARLAND. 

11 I am weary ! Oh, so weary !" 

The speaker's head sank back into the cushions of 
her easy-chair. She was young and still pretty, 
although the lips had lost their carnation tint and 
the cheek its roundness. Her hair, once fine, but 
now faded and dry, was stretched back from her 
temples, unrelieved by ripple or bandeaux, and con- 
fined in a loose, untidy-looking knot at the back of 
the neck. Nor was her apparel better adapted to 
heighten natural comeliness or atone for the loss of 
personal charms. A cashmere robe — cut after the pat- 
tern so aptly denominated "the blouse" — neither 
clean nor new, worn because it was comfortably hid 
her figure in its clumsy folds ; and a pair of worsted 
slippers, whose only recommendation must have been 
this same comfortableness, since they preserved on all 
sides a respectful distance from the tiny feet, rested 
upon the tiger-skin rug. The room betrayed none of 
the negligence of its mistress. It was tastefully fur- 

124 



" CATCH THE SUNSHINE." 125 

nished as a nursery-parlor, but with evident reference 
to the wants, intellectual and physical, of children 
of a larger growth. The window-bars were concealed 
by azaleas and japonicas, above whose evergreen 
branches hung a canary's cage ; choice pictures decked 
the walls ; there were books in costly bindings in 
cases and upon tables ; a cottage piano, shut, stood 
against the further side of the apartment, and the 
stand at the lady's side bore a small but beautiful 
bouquet of the most fragrant flowers winter can win 
from their allegiance to summer. The blinds of one 
window were bowed ; those of the other closed, and in 
their shade a child was sleeping in her crib. The 
pouting mouth and delicate skin were the mother's, 
but the forehead, clear and broad, and the wreath of 
chestnut curls must have been the father's gift. She 
slept soundly, the very picture of happy innocence ; 
one hand, like a plump white shell, folded over its 
pink lining, lay upon the outside of the coverlet, the 
other indenting her cheek. Once she smiled in her 
slumbers, and at the same instant the mother stirred 
uneasily, and a fretful moan again moved the silent air. 

" Weary ! weary !" 

The door opened unheard, and the advance of the 
intruder was as noiseless. There were no creaking 
hinges or thin carpets in that establishment. The rustle 
of garments caught the sick woman's ear just as a 
smiling face, flushed with exercise in the frosty wind, 
bent over to leave a kiss upon hers. 



126 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

"Hatty Dale! I am glad to see you!" was her 
greeting, in a tone of pleasure that formed a strange 
prelude to the languor with which she added, " But 
you startled my poor nerves terribly, coming in so 
abruptly." 

" As if I did not always enter in the same way," 
returned Miss Dale, pulling off her furred gauntlets 
to warm her fingers at the fire. " Nothing that is 
expected can be a surprise, disagreeable or pleasant, 
and I should like to inquire, Mrs. Temple, what you 
have to do, at this hour of the day, but wait and wish 
for my coming ?" 

She crossed over to look at the babe. " I will not 
kiss her just yet. Her start at the touch of the tip 
of my nose would be more reasonable as well as more 
genuine than was her mother's. And now, my dear 
lady prisoner, how do you find yourself this morning ?" 

" Worse, if possible, than when you were here yes- 
terday, ill as I appeared then, and this confinement is 
robbing me of my little remaining strength. I weaken 
every hour." 

" So I should think ! Why don't you go out?" 

11 Hatty ! what are you saying ? This weather ?" 
• " This weather !" said Hatty, stoutly. " What if 
the thermometer does stand at zero ? The air is as 
dry and pure as ever breathed in the tropics, and tenfold 
more bracing. Are your lungs diseased ?" 

" Mercy ! no, I hope not !" with a shudder. " How 
thoughtless in you to put such a notion into my head ! 



"catch the sunshine." 127 

I shall not have a moment's peace of mind until I have 
an auscultation. Candidly tell me, do you detect any 
symptoms of" 

"Consumption do you mean?" asked the other, 
coolly bringing out the word her nervous friend failed 
to articulate. "About as many as I detect in myself 
or in little Blanche there. You may rest assured that 
I would instantly communicate any suspicions of that 
kind to you, for, should they prove well-founded, I 
should feel that I had done you a signal service instead 
of injury. My opinion, Mary, has always been that, 
when you discover what your disease is, you will cure 
it yourself." 

It was hard to be angry, however cutting her 
language, in its hidden meaning, may have been, with 
that kind, good-humored face before one's eyes. Yet 
Mrs. Temple colored in vexation or embarrassment 
as she answered : ' ' That is scarcely fair, Hatty. You 
are well aware that Dr. Pilson, whose skill nobody 
questions, after a careful investigation of my case, is 
completely at fault as to the seat of the complaint. 
How can I presume to judge for myself?" 

"Just what I said!" replied Hatty, stealing a 
roguish glance at the kindling face. "I do not dis- 
pute Dr. Pilson's skill when he can make out a ' case/ 
nor his ability, when he fails here, to make out a bill, 
that, in length and clearness of details, must compen- 
sate himself and the patient's friends for the trifling 
disappointment in the first instance." 



128 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

"One fact you will admit," said the other; "my 
enforced extravagance in that respect, if extravagance 
you choose to call it, is the only expensive folly in 
which I indulge. My silks and furs and laces for 
the year do not draw heavily upon my husband's 
pocket." 

"Better that they should. I venture to affirm 
that he had rather settle a milliner's bill for a hun- 
dred dollars, than balance that ' little account ' of your 
courtly physician's by half that sum. I have heard 
house owners say that a continual outlay for repairs 
is very disheartening when the tenement operated upon 
seemed none the better for the labor and money ex- 
pended. The best thing to be done then is to pull 
down entirely or throw the property into market." 

" Which means, I suppose, that Horace ought to 
tire of me and wish me in my grave. I shall be there 
soon enough, Hatty ; never fear !" 

" Soon enough, I allow, dear Mary," rejoined Miss 
Dale, changing her bantering tone to one of earnest 
tenderness. " Many years hence will be too soon for 
your devoted husband and true friends to consign you 
to the tomb. It is to avert the terrible woe that 
would attend upon your untimely death that I would 
incite you to a different mode of existence. You have 
much to live for, Mary ; everything that makes life 
desirable and beautiful ; yet I have often heard you 
declare it to be a burden." 

"It is!" sobbed the weak dyspeptic. "You, who 



"catch the sunshine." 129 

have never suffered a day's illness, can philosophize and 
preach ahout the necessity of altering my habits, my 
1 mode of existence, 7 and so on. I own T do not 
live like a well person, for the obvious reason that 
I am not well, an argument to which, as Dr. Pilson 
says, some exceedingly sensible, healthy people, are 
strangely obtuse. You ascribe your freedom from 
sickness and pain to your cheerfulness, and active 
exercise in the open air. You sleep soundly ; you 
think it is in consequence of your contented frame 
of mind, and because you have not done injustice to 
your digestive organs. You see me sitting, day after 
day, in my easy-chair in this close, warm room ; averse 
to undertaking even the trifling journey of a single 
flight of stairs ; capricious in appetite and spirits ; 
and you cry, 'No wonder she is sick!' You confound 
cause and effect, Hatty." 

"Well argued, Dr. Pilson!" laughed Hatty. "If 
my eyes had been shut, I could have fancied you the 
worthy Galen himself. There now, Mary, don't get 
angry. It is to his interest to make you believe your- 
self sick ; it is to mine to convince you that you might 
be well if you would ' make an effort,' as Mr. Dombey's 
sister says — what was her name ?" 

" I do not know, I am sure " — a little fretfully. " I 
have never read the book." 

11 No ; but Horace told me he meant to read it aloud 
to you, since your eyes would not permit you to enjoy 
its contents for yourself." 

9 



130 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

"He offered to do so" — with a sigh; "but I was 
too nervous to bear the rustling of the leaves near 
me, especially in the evening, which is the only time 
he can spend at home. You think me very foolish, 
no doubt ; but I cannot help it." 

" I do not say that you are c foolish f but I regret, 
as you must also, that this extreme susceptibility to 
light and noise deprives your husband of what would 
otherwise afford him great pleasure. He cannot read to 
himself, either, unless he withdraws to another room, 
which he will not do, I know, while his presence gives 
you any comfort." 

" He never complains," said Mrs. Temple, in a voice 
that had a touch of offended pride. 

" And you are longing to add : ' When he does, it 
will be time for you to interfere in our domestic arrange- 
ments/ " finished Hatty. 

"You cannot quarrel with me, Mary ; so give up 
the attempt. You cannot forget the depth and sincerity 
of my love for you, and that, in my estimation, Horace 
has not his peer upon this continent." 

The right chord was struck. The spark in the eye 
was dimmed by dew ; and the lip trembled while it 
smiled. 

Hatty went on ; " Whatever may be your trials — 
and I know they are not few — you have the blessing 
of one of the noblest, fondest husbands that ever was 
given to woman. You were his pride, his glory, while 
your health lasted ; now " — her glance ran around the 



THE SUNSHINE." 131 

chamber — ' you are no less his idol, although the sick- 
room is your temple." 

The wife's tears flowed afresh, but in a more abund- 
ant and healthful stream. 

11 It is true — all true ; and I, poor wretch ! can offer 
him no return for his goodness. I wish, sometimes, that 
I were out of his way, that he had a companion more 
worthy, more congenial. You may well say that my 
trials are not light. Only four days ago, I suffered 
extreme mortification — worse than that — agony oi 
spirit, because I felt that I was depreciating in his eyes. 
Oh, if his love should wear out under these constant 
tests, this incessant demand for his patient forbearance !" 

" I hope there is no need of such a fear," said Haiti e, 
soothingly. " But what is this new trouble V 

"You may recollect Eleanor Stewart, whom it was 
said Horace addressed before he knew me — a dashing 
belle, who spent a winter here with her sister, Mrs. 
Manners ?" 
• "I do, perfectly." 

11 Whether his admiration was, in truth, mingled 
with love, I cannot tell," pursued Mrs. Temple ; "but 
certain it is that he has always remembered her as 
the finest specimen of a certain type of beauty he ever 
saw. She had not seen him since his marriage until one 
day last week, when he met her on the street. He came 
home fairly raving about her. I wish you could have 
heard him. Three years, he said, had wrought no visi- 
ble change in her, unless, indeed, they had added to her 



132 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

attractions. Her style was peculiar — m its way inimi 
table. She had accosted him with the most engaging 
friendliness, congratulated him upon his happiness as a 
husband and father, and expressed a desire to become 
acquainted with me. He represented the state of my 
health which debarred me from visiting my most 
intimate friends; whereupon, with what he called a 
1 grateful disregard of etiquette' — with what /considered 
bold impertinence — she begged to be allowed to pay her 
respects to me in person, at as early a day as might 
be convenient to me. She ' could not think of standing 
upon ceremony with the wife of an old and esteemed 
friend.' By the time that he got thus far, I was half 
mad with a nervous headache, for he talked faster and 
louder than usual, and was in such a merry bustle that I 
positively feared his head was turned. I had to entreat 
him first to lay aside the poker, inasmuch as the fire did 
not need stirring ; and he only used it to beat time upon 
the gate to the chant of Miss Eleanor's perfections ; then 
to stop chirping to the bird, and to throw the cover over 
the cage, for Dicky, in reply, was piping his shrillest 
notes ; then please not to finger my flowers, and finally 
to sit down, and tell me, in as few words as possible, 
what his commands were." 

" Oh, Mary !" uttered Miss Dale, involuntarily. 

" Yes, I was cross ; but, if you had the least concep- 
tion of what nerves are, you would sympathize with me. 
Well, he quieted down, and asked my pardon for his 
thoughtlessness. ' I have no commands whatever 



"catch the sunshine." 133 

Mary,' said he ; ' but it would please me to see Miss 
Stewart in my house, if the thought is not too repugnant 
to you ; and I believe that her society would do you 
good ; she is so lively and entertaining.' Think of 
that, Hatty, when Dr. Pilson has said, over and over, 
that excitement is the very worst thing in the world 
for me in my present condition ! and my favorite de- 
testation is one of your so-called ' lively ' women." 

" I had better take my leave, then," said her visitor, 
rising. 

A hasty motion of Mrs. Temple's arm stopped her. 
11 You are too bad !" she said, half crying, half laughing. 
"As if I could mean you, my best, almost my only 
friend ! Sit down, and hear me through. The con- 
clusion of the matter — for I was too weak and too 
weary to dispute — was, that Miss Stewart might 
call the following morning, if agreeable to her lady- 
ship, and that Mr. Temple should be at home to 
receive her, for I could not sustain so much brilliancy 
alone. I was miserable all the forenoon, for my 
panado was too sweet, and soured as soon as I had 
swallowed it ; and I shall always be sure that that 
blundering housekeeper of mine mixed green with 
my black tea, although she has been told twenty times 
that it is rank poison to me. Blanche, too, according 
to her father's directions, must be dressed in her 
prettiest frock ; and, when the maid brought her to 
me to see that all was right, I found that the stupid 
creature had looped up her sleeves with blue ribbons, 



134 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

instead of letting her wear the set of coral and gold 
I had ordered expressly for her. By the time this 
was corrected, I was, as you may suppose, completely 
worn out, and made up my mind that I could not 
see company at all that day. If Miss Stewart called, 
Horace must meet her in the parlor, and explain mat- 
ters. Just as I had formed this determination, and 
resolved, moreover, to send for the doctor if I did not 
get better very soon, Horace came running up stairs. I 
felt really sorry at the sight of his great disappoint- 
ment ; yet I could not but think him somewhat incon- 
siderate when he tried to prevail upon me to alter my 
plan. ' If I would only let her come up for a few 
minutes/ he urged, he * would not ask more than this. 7 
He had seen her down town but an hour previous, and 
informed her that I was in my usual health. Now, 
this was perfectly preposterous, for, in addition to 
the fatigue of talking with a stranger, there was the 
trying process of dressing. For once, he was obsti- 
nate in refusing to see the propriety of my reasoning ; 
and I was worried to the very brink of a hysterical 
attack, when the conversation was cut short in a truly 
dramatic manner by John's announcement, ' Miss 
Stewart!' and, to my unutterable horror, the lady 
herself was at his heels. What I said or did, I hardly 
knew then, or can recall now. I have a confused re- 
collection of the touch of her dainty glove, of her 
fluttering silk flounces and waving white plumes, and 
that my old wrapper looked shamefully mean by con- 



"catch the sunshine." 135 

trast with her magnificence. This was my first over- 
whelming impression ; then, as the hot blood began 
to retire from my brain and cheeks, I saw more clearly 
a tall, finely formed woman, dressed in the height of 
the mode, filling, overflowing with shining silken 
waves, a chair just opposite to me — a mocking sneer 
in her eyes that belied the polite accents her lips were 
forming. I could not complain of any want of atten- 
tion, for she addressed all her observations to me, in 
spite of Horace's attempts to divert her notice. In 
speech, she ignored my disordered dress and deport-* 
ment ; but each flash of those eyes told me that nothing 
of all this escaped them, and that, at heart, she 
triumphed mercilessly in my discomfiture. Blanche 
was a * love/ an 'angel/ and the very * miniature of 
her mother ;' the chamber was a ' fairy nook, a bower 
of pleasure, the home of the graces ;' and ' it was easy 
to divine whose taste had been at work here.' She 
crushed me with flowers, flung and piled them upon 
me — musk-roses and other sickening sweets — until I 
was suffocated into silence. Then, and not until then, 
when she saw that I was ready to faint under the load 
of flattery, more intolerable than abuse, did she leave me 
alone. Horace attended her to the front door, and, 
returning to the room, rang for the servant who had 
showed the visitor up. The man excused himself by 
stating that Miss Stewart had told him we were ex- 
pecting her, which he supposed to be the truth from 
something my maid had said in his hearing. Horace 



136 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

dismissed him, and stood for a minute looking at me 
— oh, Hatty, with such an expression ! a mixture of 
shame and sorrow I shall never forget — then quitted me 
without a word. He was absent until tea-time. Dr. 
Pilson had called three times in the afternoon ; and my 
husband found me sick in bed. No allusion has been 
made by either of us to the terrible scene of the morn- 
ing ; and he is, if possible, kinder than ever before • 
but his suffering must have been surpassed only by 
mine. To live to be a disgrace to him, a source of 
incessant anxiety, everything except what his wife 
should be ! is not this grief greater than I can bear ?" 

"Heavier than you should bear," said Hatty, signifi- 
cantly. " Did it ever occur to you that you are ex- 
ceedingly inconsistent both in language and action ?" 

"No. How?" 

" You would die, you assert, rather than lose your 
husband's love ; yet, when you are acquainted with the 
means of avoiding this catastrophe, you will not exert 
yourself to use them, through fear of bringing on one 
of your celebrated nervous headaches, which, how- 
ever painful, will not, I am convinced, whatever Dr 
Pilson may say to the contrary, endanger your life. 
Positively," she continued, " if any modern Ccelebs 
were to consult me as to the necessary qualifications 
of a wife, I should advise him, above all things else, to 
seek one who never complained of this most fashion- 
able malady. I have no consolation for you, Mary. 
You. know your danger, which I also acknowledge ; 



"catch the sunshine/' 137 

and you have a woman's heart. I must go now. For- 
give me if I have appeared harsh, unsympathizing." 

The tear-sprinkled handkerchief was again pressed 
to the invalid's face. "I am forsaken! comfortless!" 
was now her cry. 

Miss Dale laid her hand upon her arm, and pointed 
to Blanche's crib. Through a crack in the shutters 
darted a solitary sunbeam, falling directly across the 
babe's coverlet. The little one had probably been 
awakened by it, and was evidently highly delighted 
with the bright intruder. Both eager hands were out- 
stretched to grasp the golden pencil that broke into 
fragments in the dimpled fingers. 

" Catch the sunshine," was all Hatty said, as she 
kissed mother and child. 

The nurse entered for her charge ; and Mrs. Temple 
had leisure and solitude in which to ponder upon this 
last sentence. There was a time when life was steeped 
in glorious sunlight, such radiance as her soul drank 
in as its food and delight. She remembered the proud 
satisfaction of the lover, then of the husband, in her 
beauty enhanced by the vivacity of youth and happi- 
ness ; in the quick intellect, now, alas, so perverted ! 
A petted child at home, she brought to her new estate 
little knowledge of the trials incident to it. Per- 
plexed, harassed, discouraged, it was no marvel that 
her spirit soon succumbed, and that she was willing 
to believe the flesh still more weak. She confessed 
to herself, this morning, what she had often been diml)/ 



138 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

conscious of before, that there had been times in the 
past when reformation would have been easy — when, 
stimulated by the wifely love which still burned in 
her bosom, she felt almost persuaded to defy disease, 
and, more formidable still, doctors ; but habit and 
indolence mastered resolution. " Now " — and with 
a hopeless sigh, she held up her wasted hands, tremu- 
lous as those of palsied age — " what can I do ?'" 

The wedding-ring hung loosely upon its finger. 
She groaned with the pang that came with the sug- 
gested omen. Was the bond it typified, although 
purer and stronger than gold, slipping from the hearts 
it united, or growing weaker and thinner from con- 
stant abrasion? "Dark! darker than ever!' 7 she 
murmured. "Nothing is left for me but the night of 
the grave." 

With the languid pace that had taken the place of 
her once elastic gait, she tottered, rather than walked, 
to the window, and opened the blinds. The warm 
flood poured over the plants, and enlivened the bird, 
whose thrill of ecstasy proved his instant appreciation 
of the favor. Struck by the rich coloring of a newly 
opened azalea, Mrs. Temple bent forwards to examine 
it more nearly, when her eye fell upon two pale 
yellow leaves, breaking through the mould on the 
side of the pot nearest the window. A touch would 
have crushed them ; and their form was yet too indefi- 
nite to declare their parentage. They might have 
derived their being from the superb plant towering 



"catch the sunshine." 139 

above them, or been the plebeian product of some 
waif seed, dropped, as sometimes happens in human 
parterres, in aristocratic earth. Yet each feeble fibre 
lent all its might to expand its covering towards the 
light. Need we repeat the lesson taught by the twin 
leaflets to her who gazed upon them ? She had been 
resigned to a living burial, sinking beneath the mould 
and dust that self-indulgence was heaping upon every 
faculty of usefulness ; or if, at intervals, spasmodic 
quickenings, longings for the sunbeams, stirred within 
her breast, the difficulty of the first step paralyzed 
them anew. Oh, hers is not the only immortal nature 
that burrows, and grovels, and languishes out — we 
cannot say a vegetable existence, for the thousand 
forms of strength and loveliness, to-day feeding upon 
air and sunshine, bowing and blooming their thanks 
to Him who has sent both, forbid the calumnious 
comparison — but a life that has no parallel in nature, 
unless we trace a flattered resemblance in the silly 
sloth, clinging to his tree so long as there remains 
bark sufficient for his daily sustenance, and wailing 
out his weak cry at every step towards a new home. 
It was long since Mary Temple had thought deeply 
upon any subject except her own bodily ailments and 
imaginary grievances ; but the touched heart now aided 
the brain. There, before her frail teacher, she knelt, 
the sunshine resting, like a blessing, upon her bowed 
head, and thanked jGrod fervently for the loves of earth, 
the hopes of heaven, to which her eyes had been so 



140 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

willfully blinded, and entreated strength to quit her 
prison cell. She was really wearied by the unwonted 
excitement of the forenoon, and obliged to lie upon the 
lounge until within an hour of dinner time ; but her 
husband was surprised to see her open the door as 
he bounded up stairs — a fleet, soft tread, acquired by 
months of practice — still more astonished and pleased 
at the cheerful voice in which she saluted him, and 
the change in her accustomed dishabille. The dingy 
worsted wrapper was superseded by one of dark, rich 
silk, whose pink facings relieved the sallowness of the 
wearer — a robe hitherto reserved for the very rare 
occasions deemed important enough to justify the 
trouble of dressing. 

11 Are you expecting company, Mary ?" 

She was listening for the question ; yet it caused a 
sharp twinge of self-reproach. " Only my husband," 
was her gentle reply. 

He noted the emotion she strove to conceal, and 
kissed the quivering mouth, his own eyes full of 
tender feeling. Even in his refusal of her timid pe- 
tition to be allowed to dine with him, there was such 
affectionate kindness that she could not feel disap- 
pointed. "We must be careful, and not get well too 
fast," he said ; and both hearts gave a sudden throb at 
the words. 

"Get well?" She repeated them over and over 
after he had gone, not with the despairing moan in 
which it was her wont to utter them, but in a trust 



THE SUNSHINE." 141 

that was almost confidence. She had set her face stead- 
fastly towards the light, and the shadows were cast 
backwards out of her sight. 

Brother merchants who passed Horace Temple on 
his way down street, that afternoon, wondered what 
successful speculation had given such a rise to his 
spirits ; and his clerks compared notes oh the same 
subject, some of them more than hinting at an extra 
glass of champagne, which they knew, perhaps better 
than he, " maketh glad the heart of man." 

Several days elapsed before Hatty Dale's next visit. 
She heard a man's voice as she opened the door of her 
friend's sitting room ; but, relying on the footman's 
assurance that his mistress was not engaged, she en- 
tered. Her impulse was to retreat as she beheld the 
portly figure of Dr. Pilson : but Mrs. Temple called her 
forward. " The doctor and I are only having a friendly 
chat, my dear," she said. 

" To which we are more than happy to admit Miss 
Dale," subjoined the bland physician. M For myself, 
I regard your coming as particularly opportune. I 
have such faith in your sound judgment, that I rely 
upon you to assist me in enlightening our patient here 
as to the fallacy of a theory she has adopted lately. 
What think you, Miss Dale, of this gentlest of natures 
stubbornly resisting the advice of her medical man, and 
scouting at the science of medicine itself?" 

Mrs. Temple smiled brightly ; but the answering 
gleam upon Hatty's face was very faint. ' ; Perhaps 



J 42 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

the ' patient ' considers that ' patience has had its 
perfect work/ " she replied, with an attempt at play- 
fulness. 

" Let me answer you from the same book," said the 
doctor, readily: " ' Be not weary in well-doing.' " 

"I have had very little experience in well-doing 
for eighteen months, doctor/ 7 Mrs. Temple interposed. 
" I hope to tell you a different story before long," 

11 1 wish you may find your system a successful one, 
madam. Would that I could say ' I hope so ! 7 You 
will hardly believe me " — turning to Hatty — " when I 
inform you that yesterday noon I met her and Mr. 
Temple riding out in a sleigh, actually a sleigh ! This 
fragile creature, who, a fortnight since, could not 
leave her chamber, this tender flower, this mimosa, 
this "— 

" Dormouse !" suggested the quondam invalid, " who, 
having been most thoroughly awakened by that same 
sleigh-ride, is very much disposed to repeat the experi- 
ment frequently while the snow lasts.' 7 

Dr. Pilson arose, dignified, yet polite. ''As you 
judge best, madam, 77 he said, gravely. " My remon- 
strance was meant in kindness. I have performed my 
duty. If, at any time, you should need my poor 
skill, I beg you to let me know. I have always served 
you to the best of my ability. Heaven forbid that T 
should ever cease to do this ! 77 And, with this pious ejacu- 
lation, he bowed himself out. 

41 Now, Mary, what does all this mean? 77 asked 



SUNSHINE." 143 

Hatty. " Have you really disobeyed his directions, 
and to the extent that he says ?" 

" My study, since your last visit, has been to obey 
nature and conscience," was the rejoinder. "It is hard 
work, Hatty — far more arduous than I conceived of 
when I began it ; but, thus far, the ' grace has come 
with the burden. 7 " 

" And ever will," said her visitor, feelingly. 

" I pray that it may, for I am deplorably weak. 
Twenty times a day I am tempted to abandon the 
attempt at reform. I seem never before to have under- 
stood the meaning of the word ' inertia. 7 Body and 
mind are alike averse to the new regimen, for I no 
longer feed the one with professional dietetics, or the 
other with morbid musings, nor suffer both to drone for 
hours and days together. My progress is painfully 
slow." 

"Few great works are accomplished in a day, 77 was 
Hatty y s encouragement ; " and you have been sick. Do 
not fly into the opposite extreme of imagining all your 
maladies unreal because they have been aggravated by 
fancies and drugs. I am truly glad to leave you thus, 
Mary, for I believe you will persevere. 77 

"Leave me?" repeated Mrs. Temple, in some alarm 
at her voice and manner. " Are you going away ?" 

" On a long journey, to " — 

"To pay a visit? 77 

" Yes. I have relatives there, and may remain with 
them until spring, 77 said Hatty, stooping to lift Blanche 



144 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

from the floor. Her look was so sad that Mrs. Temple 
forbore to make further inquiry, without suspecting that 
her melancholy arose from any deeper feeling than 
natural regret at leaving home and friends for an absence 
which might be prolonged indefinitely. " Still," she 
thought, after she had gone, " her present home is not 
a paradise that she should grieve to leave it. I have 
often wondered if her cold, worldly aunt could supply 
the wants of an orphan's heart, and such a heart as 
hers." 

Hatty wrote with tolerable regularity during the 
winter, but such short, unsatisfactory letters that her 
correspondent was disposed to think her careless of their 
friendship or forgetful that the return epistles were pen- 
ned with difficulty, sometimes with absolute pain. The 
most sunny day has its clouds, and there were still hours 
of depression, days of irritability, imperfectly controlled, 
that shaded Horace's hopeful face and wet the wife's pil- 
low with tears of penitence. The demon Dyspepsia 
had been too assiduously courted, too tenderly nursed to 
be exorcised by a single effort. The twin-teachers had 
exchanged their sickly hue for a dark green, then 
relapsed slowly into sere second infancy and died meekly 
in the shadow of the thrifty off-shoots, their ascendants ; 
snow and thaw were gone, fine days were frequent, 
when exotics and Canary revelled in air as well as sun- 
shine, before our heroine could safely take upon herseli 
the duties of a housekeeper, and venture occasionally 
into societv. More than one card had passed between 






" CATCH THE SUNSHINE." 145 

Miss Stewart and herself, for, by a succession of mis- 
chances, neither had ever found the other at home. 

" Have you any engagement this evening, love ?" she 
id quired of her husband one morning, as, in neat wrap- 
per and most becoming cap, she sat behind the coffee - 
urn. 

" None ; I am quite at your service," replied he 
with alacrity, for he was not yet quite used to the 
delight of possessing a wife who could have evening 
engagements. 

"Then" — blushing a little at her own memories— 
" if you have no objections, I will invite your friend, 
Miss Stewart, to take tea with us." 

Horace was speechless for a moment in absolute 
amazement ; then, pushing back his chair, walked 
around to his wife's place, and kissed her as though they 
had not been married full two years and a half. She 
could have cried heartily as she hid her face upon the 
dear shoulder, but she battled bravely with the happy 
shower, and conquered. A gloriously happy woman she 
was all that day, for struggles, weariness, self-denial 
were amply rewarded by the words he had said in her 
ear, " My noble wife ; Grod bless you !" 

Miss Stewart returned a gracious acceptance to Mrs 
Temple's note of invitation, although not generally par 
tial to quiet tea-drinkings. 

" But," she said to her sister, " if this visit proves as 
rich a farce as the first I made at that house, I shall not 
suffer for lack of entertainment. Oh, dear !" she 

10 



146 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

laughed, arranging the picturesque net of crimson 
and gold in the hair she knew to be one of her chief 
beauties, while her black eyes flashed back from the 
mirror their scornful light, "the remembrance of that 
scene will be fresh in my mind twenty years hence. If 
I were dying, the picture would excite a smile. My 
unheralded entrance was a coup oVetat. I owed Horace 
Temple a grudge, as you do not need to be told ; but 
from that hour, I have almost forgiven him ; I could not 
have desired a more complete revenge. 1 suppose 
we shall sup upon weak tea and Graham bread in 
that second-story nursery ; and that Madame will sport 
her recherche dressing-gown — I verily believe she has 
worn it by day and by night for the last year ; and that 
her hair has not been thoroughly combed in the same 
time. And this is the wife of the fastidious man, who, 
as he once informed me — impertinently enough — had in 
his early youth formed a standard of womanly excel- 
lence which he had never seen approached since, yet was 
determined not to marry until he did. Sic transit gloria 
mundi resolves /" 

Mr. Temple stood ready to welcome the belle at the 
outer door, and had a most cordial greeting. Then a 
lady came from the parlor, and the imperturbable 
woman of fashion was nearly surprised into an exclama- 
tion as she spoke the usual phrases of reception due 
from hostess to guest. A slender figure, with just 
enough fragility to make it almost ethereal in its grace, 
attired with exquisite neatness and taste ; a face classi- 



THE SUNSHINE.' 7 147 

cally oval, every feature of delicate beauty and illumined 
by a smile of heart sunshine — these made up the appari- 
tion that utterly confounded her. Mrs. Temple saw, 
and it must be confessed enjoyed, the effect of her 
appearance. This consciousness of an advantage gained 
at the outset reassured her to meet the would-be haughty 
condescension with which Miss Stewart recovered her- 
self. Two or three gentlemen and as many ladies 
followed her arrival, ''just such people as it was an 
object to cultivate/ 7 she said internally, and to this spe- 
cies of agriculture she accordingly addressed her best 
energies. But, as is often the case, the force brought 
into action seemed so egregiously disproportionate to 
the work to be done, that the attempt was ridiculous. 
She was over-dressed, too talkative, too prononce, as 
she would have said of another, in modern American 
too "loud' 7 and "fast 77 for the refined group, particu- 
larly beside, the gentle, lovely lady of the mansion, 
whose sweet tones, ever ready to fill up the pauses in 
the conversation, were like flute solos heard in the rests 
of clarion music. Miss Stewart was a failure, and as 
this was discovered to be irretrievable, she became ill- 
natured, what in a plain dowdy would have been rude 
and snappish. The most pleasant time of the evening 
to her was when her carriage was announced. Mr. 
Temple escorted her home. He was in high spirits, 
" could afford to be, 77 she unwillingly allowed to herself. 
Her adieux were less elaborate than formerly, and it is 
to be doubted whether there was much sincerity in her 



148 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

reciprocation of his hope that they " should see a great 
deal of her now that Mrs. Temple's health enabled her 
to partake more freely of the company of her friends. " 

His wife was sitting in a thoughtful mood by the fire 
in her room, awaiting his return. 

" Bravely done, darling !" he said, merrily. " I have 
been right proud of my household fairy to-night." 

" Almost as well satisfied as if you had married your 
first love ?" was her arch query ; but there was anxiety 
in the eyes so fondly raised to his. 

"Better satisfied than if any other woman in the 
world were my wife." She could not mistake his truth- 
ful emphasis. " A million times more pleased than if 
the queenly Eleanor occupied your place." 

" Thank you !" — drawing his brow down to her 
lips — "thank you! oh, so heartily! Yet, dear Horace, 
there was a time when she made you sadly ashamed of 
me." 

"Rot a word! Nothing you ever did caused me 
one tithe of the mortification I should feel, this evening, 
were I her husband. She is a gay humming-bird, bril- 
liant, but spiteful, and fit only for summer weather. 
Let her pass, Mary. Her gyrations cause but little com- 
motion in our quiet home-nest. A dear and lovely one 
it is to me." 

He did not say: "You made it so ;" but she felt 
that this was his meaning. 

" Darling !" — she started from her reverie at the 
word and the pressure of his arm, and withdrew her 



"catch the sunshine." 149 

gaze from the fantastic pictures she was tracing in the 
coals — " you mentioned my first love a while ago. 
Have you any idea who she was ?" 

11 1 referred to Miss Stewart.'' 

" So I supposed. But I never loved her, never gave 
her the least intimation of any intention on my part to 
address her, although I have heard that she numbers me 
among her slain." 

" I am glad to hear that," interrupted his listener — 
11 very glad." 

"But I had a 'first love,' notwithstanding," pur- 
sued he. " Don't look grieved, and accuse me of a want 
of frankness towards you, whom you and Heaven are 
my witnesses I love as well as ever man did a wife. I 
never thought it expedient to tell you the story until 
now. Years before the never-to-be-forgotten visit to 
your native place, which made me acquainted with its 
fairest ornament, I loved Hatty Dale." 

"Hatty Dale!" 

" I loved her, and told her so. I was then twenty- 
two, and an ardent suitor. She, a girl of eighteen, with 
one of the warmest hearts that ever throbbed or ached, 
and, as I truly believe, preferring me to all the rest of 
the world, rejected me decidedly, repeatedly." 

"But why?" 

Mary flushed with indignation, never considering 
that this rejection had been the foundation of her 
wedded bliss. 

'* For a long time, she would assign no reason for a 



150 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

course, which, I could see, was fraught with anguish to 
her as well as to me. At last, in an overflow of emo- 
tion, a wild, sweeping flood of sorrow, that left bare 
the inmost recesses of her soul, she revealed all, a 
secret which I have kept sacredly until this hour ; 
nor would I disclose it now, even to you, without her 
expressed desire as my warrant for doing so. I had 
a letter from her, this afternoon. Its contents I pur- 
posely withheld till your company had gone. Hatty's 

mother, whom she was called to to nurse, is 

dead." 

"Her mother? I thought she lost both parents 
while an infant." 

"So says the world, which also reports her to be 
an only child, adopted by her father's sister. She was 
taken at an early age, by her present guardian ; but she 
is the youngest of three living children. The others, a 
brother and sister, much older than herself, are in the 

insane asylum at , where their mother spent the 

last fifteen years of her life." 

Mrs. Temple turned very pale, and burst into tears. 
Horace was scarcely less agitated. 

" This terrible story the noble creature imparted to 
me as the sole cause of her determined resistance to 
my proposals. If it effectually extinguished all hope 
and indeed all desire to make her mine, it also increased 
my respect, and did not diminish my regard for her. 
We learned the calmer love of brother and sister, a sen- 
timent which has made me a better man and, I trust, has 



"catch the sunshine. 151 

brightened her lonely path a little. When I made you 
my bride, dear one, I bore with me her blessing and 
prayers. Let her subsequent conduct testify to her no- 
bility of heart, her purity of motive." 

" She has been a blessed sister to me," said Mary, 
tearfully. " All that I am this night, all that brings you 
happiness, under God, I owe to her ! My poor Hatty ! 
What a life hers has been !" 

" Hear what she writes," continued Horace : " * If 
you think she can bear it, I wish you to tell Mary every- 
thing. That I have never spoken to her of the fearful 
cloud which has hung over my head for so long, has not 
been because I doubted her discretion or friendship, but 
I dreaded the effect of the communication upon her 
nerves and spirits. She is stronger now, and perhaps 
able to hear and sympathize with the distress of one 
who loves her so truly. But even through this thick 
darkness pierces one ray of sunshine. It is the thought 
that in the grave where I have laid my mother — be- 
loved, although I never knew the full meaning of that 
sweetest of names — in that rest are ended the wan- 
derings, the woes of her troubled spirit — that restored 
to the serene loveliness of her youth, in the presence 
of her father and ours, she now ' sees light. 7 And oh, 
I rejoice to remember that, upon earth, in the deeply 
sunken vale through which He has decreed my way shall 
lie, there is no gloom His smile cannot dispel, except 
when the shadows in which we are enveloped are cre- 
ated by ourselves ! May his love keep us from such !' " 



MADAME TALLIEN". 

With a form of wondrous beauty 

And of most unrivalled grace, 
With a voice of winning sweetness 

And a fair and witching face, 

From the pleasant paths of girlhood 

She came up with joy elate, 
And took thoughtlessly upon her 

All a matron's care and state. 

And we scarce can ever wonder 
That her life so careless seems — 

She is now but just emerging 

From her childhood's thoughtless dreams. 

And she has not learned the lesson, 
That can only come with years — 

That our life is not for pleasure, 
But for labor and for tears. 

But behold her, by misfortune, 

From her height of pleasure hurled ; 

Hath she seen how unsubstantial 
Are the honors of the world ? 




" 










MADAME TALLIEN. 153 

Doth she view her life as something 

That was profitless and vain ? 
What hath been to her the discipline 

Of sorrow and of pain ? 

Alas ! that heaviest trial, 

Lonely thought, and fiery strife 
Could not change the heart within her, 

Nor the purpose of her life. 

For she lived by fitful impulse, 
Doing sometimes deeds of good ; 

Sometimes, in red wine washing 
Out the memories of blood. 

Reigning as the queen of beauty, 

With an undisputed claim ; 
Hiding with a crown of roses 

All her forehead's crimson shame. 

Yet we would not quite condemn her, 

Unto perfect infamy, 
For she seemed to have within her 

Something better than we see. 

And she might have added virtue 

To her beauty and her grace 
If her lines of life had fallen 

In a good and pleasant place. 



BERTRAM THE LIME-BURNER. 

BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 

Bertram the lime-burner, a rough and heavy looking 
man, begrimed with charcoal, sat watching his kiln 
at nightfall, while his little son played at building houses 
with the scattered fragments of marble, when, on the 
hill-side below them, they heard a roar of laughter, not 
mirthful, but slow, and even solemn, like a wind shaking 
the bows of the forest. • 

" Father, what is that?" asked the little boy, leaving 
his play, and pressing betwixt his father's knees. 

" Oh, some reveller, I suppose," answered the lime- 
burner ; "some merry fellow from the bar-room in the 
village, who dared not laugh loud enough within doors, 
lest he should blow the roof of the house off. So, here 
he is, shaking his jolly sides at the root of Graylock." 

11 But, father," said the child, more sensitive than the 
obtuse middle-aged clown, "he does not laugh like a 
man that is glad ; so the noise frightens me !" 

" Don't be a fool, child !" cried the father, gruffly ; 
:i you will never make a man, I do believe ; there is too 

154 



BERTRAM, THE LIME-BURNER. 155 

much of your mother in you. I have known the rust- 
ling of a leaf to startle her. Hark, here comes that 
merry fellow now. You shall see that there is no harm 
in him." 

Bertram and his little son, while they were talking 
thus, sat watching the lime-kiln. It was a rude, round, 
tower-like structure, about twenty feet high, heavily 
built of rough stones, and with a hillock of earth heaped 
about the larger part of its circumference, so that the 
blocks and fragments of marble might be drawn by cart 
loads and thrown in at the top. There was an opening 
at the bottom of the tower, like an oven mouth, but 
large enough to admit a man in a stooping posture, and 
provided with a massive iron door. With the smoke 
and jets of flame issuing from the chinks and crevices of 
this door, which seemed to give admittance into the hill- 
side, it resembled nothing so much as the private 
entrance to the infernal regions, which the shepherds of 
the Delectable Mountains were accustomed to show to 
pilgrims. 

There are many such lime-kilns in that tract of 
country, for the purpose of burning the white marble, 
which composes a large part of the substance of the 
hills. Some of them, built years ago, and long deserted, 
with weeds growing in the vacant ground of the interior, 
which is open to the sky, and grass and wild flowers 
rooting themselves into the chinks of the stones, look 
already like relics of antiquity, and may yet be over- 
spread with the lichens of centuries to come. Others, 



156 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

where the lime-burner still feeds his daily and night-long 
fire, afford points of interest to the wanderer among the 
hills, who seats himself on a log of wood or a fragment 
of marble, to hold a chat with the solitary man. It is a 
lonesome, and when the character is inclined to thought, 
may be an intensely thoughtful occupation, as it proved 
in the case of Ethan Brand, who had mused to some 
purpose, in days gone by, while the fire in this very 
kiln was burning. 

The man who now watched the fire was of a differ- 
ent order, and troubled himself with no thoughts save 
the very few that were requisite to his business. At 
frequent intervals, he flung back the clashing weight 
of the iron door, and turning his face from the insuf- 
ferable glare, thrust in huge logs of oak, or stirred the 
immense brands with a long pole. Within the furnace 
were seen the curling and riotous flames, and the burn- 
ing marble, almost molten with the intensity of the 
heat ; while without, the reflection of the fire quivered 
on the dark intricacy of the surrounding forest, and 
showed in the foreground a bright and ruddy little pic- 
ture of the hut, the spring beside its door, the athletic 
and coal-begrimed figure of the lime-burner, and the 
half-frightened child, shrinking into the protection of his 
father's shadow. And when again the iron door was 
closed, then re-appeared the tender light of the half-full 
moon, which vainly strove to trace out the indistinct 
shapes of the neighboring mountains ; and, in the upper 
sky, there was a flitting congregation of clouds, still 



THE LIME-BURNER. 157 

faintly tinged with the rosy sunset, though this far 
down into the valley the sunshine had vanished long 
and long ago. 

The little boy now crept still closer to his father, as 
footsteps were heard ascending the hill-side, had a 
human form thrust aside the bushes that clustered 
beneath the trees. 

"Halloo! who is it?" cried the lime-burner, vexed 
at his son's timidity, yet half infected by it. "Come 
forward and show yourself like a man, or I'll fling this 
chunk of marble at your head." 

11 You offer me a rough welcome," said a gloomy 
voice, as the unknown man drew nigh ; "yet I neither 
claim nor desire a kinder one, even at my own fire-side." 

To obtain a distincter view, Bertram threw open the 
iron door of the kiln, whence immediately issued a gush 
of fierce light that smote full upon the stranger's face 
and figure. To a careless eye there appeared nothing 
very remarkable in his aspect, which was that of a man 
in a coarse, brown, country-made suit of clothes, tall and 
thin, with the staff and heavy shoes of a wayfarer. As 
he advanced, he fixed his eyes — which were very bright — 
intently upon the brightness of the furnace, as if he 
beheld, or expected to behold, some object worthy of 
note within it. 

11 Good evening, stranger," said the lime-burner ; 
11 whence come you so late in the day ?" 

" I come from my search," answered the wayfarer, 
" for, at last, it is finished." 



158 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

" Drunk or crazy !" muttered Bertram to himself. 
"I shall have trouble with the fellow. The sooner I 
drive him away the better." 

The little boy, all in a tremble, whispered to his 
father, and begged him to shut the door of the kiln, so 
tha.t there might not be so much light, for that there was 
something in the man's face which he was afraid to look 
at, yet could not look away from. And indeed, even 
the lime-burner's dull and torpid sense began to be 
impressed with an indescribable something in that thin, 
rugged, thoughtful visage, with the grizzled hair hang- 
ing wildly about it, and those deeply-sunken eyes, 
which gleamed like fires within the entrance of a myste- 
rious cavern. But, as he closed the door, the stranger 
turned towards him, and spoke in a quiet, familiar way, 
that made Bertram feel as if he were a sane and sen- 
Bible man after all. 

1 * Your task draws to an end, I see," said he. 
" This marble has already been burning three days. A 
few hours more will convert the stone into lime." 

" Why, who are you?" exclaimed the lime-burner. 
11 You seem as well acquainted with my business as I 
am myself." 

11 And well I may be," said the stranger ; " fori fol- 
lowed the same craft many a long year, and here, too, 
on this very spot. But you are a new comer in these 
parts. Did you ever hear of Ethan Brand?" 

11 The man that went in search of the Unpardonable 
Sin ?" asked Bertram, with a laugh 



BEETEAM, THE LIME-BURNER. 159 

" The same," answered the stranger. " He has 
found what he sought, and therefore he comes back 
again." 

" What! then you are Ethan Brand himself?" cried 
the lime-burner in amazement. " I am a new comer 
here, as you say, and they call it eighteen years since 
you left the foot of Graylock. But, I can tell you, the 
good folks still talk about Ethan Brand in the village 
yonder, and what a strange errand took him away from 
his lime-kiln. Well, and so you have found the Unpar 
donable Sin ?" 

11 Even so," said the stranger, calmly. 

11 If the question is a fair one," proceeded Bertram, 
" where might it be ?" 

Ethan Brand laid his finger on his own heart. 

" Here !" replied he. 

And then, without mirth in his countenance, but as 
if moved by an involuntary recognition of the infinite 
absurdity of seeking throughout the world for what was 
the closest of all things to himself, and looking into every 
heart save his own, for what was hidden in no other 
breast, he broke into a laugh of scorn. It was the same 
slow, heavy laugh that had almost appalled the lime- 
burner when it heralded the wa/farer's approach. 

The solitary mountain-side was made dismal by it. 
Laughter, when out of place, mistimed, or bursting forth 
from a disordered state of feeling, may be the most ter- 
rible modulation of the human voice. The laughter oi 
one asleep, even if it be a little child ; the madman's 



160 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

laugh, or the wild screaming laugh of an idiot, are 
sounds that we sometimes tremble to hear, and would 
always willingly forget. Poets have imagined no utter- 
ance of fiends or hobgoblins so fearfully appropriate as 
a laugh. And even the obtuse lime-burner felt his 
nerves shake as this strange man looked inwards at his 
own heart, and burst into laughter that rolled away in 
the night, and was indistinctly reverberated among the 
hills. 

11 Joe," said he to his little son, "scamper down to 
the tavern in the village, and tell the jolly fellows there 
that Ethan Brand has come back, and that he has found 
the Unpardonable Sin I" 

The boy darted away on his errand, to which Ethan 
Brand made no objection, nor seemed hardly to notice 
it. He sat on a log of wood, looking steadfastly at the 
iron door of the kiln. When the child was out of sight, 
and the swift and light foot-step ceased to be heard 
treading first on the fallen leaves and then on the rocky 
mountain path, the lime-burner began to regret his 
departure. He felt that the little fellow's presence had 
been a barrier between his guest and himself, and that 
he must now deal, heart to heart, with a man who, on 
his own confession, had committed the only one crime 
for which Heaven could afford no mercy. That crime, 
in its indistinct blackness, seemed to overshadow him. 
The lime-burner's own sins rose up within him, and 
made his memory riotous with a throng of evil shapes 
that asserted their kindred with the master sin, what- 



BERTRAM, THE LIME-BURNER. 161 

ever it might be, which it was within the scope of man's 
corrupted nature to conceive and cherish. They were 
all of one family ; they went to and fro between his 
breast and Ethan Brand's and carried dark greetings 
from one to the other. 

Then Bertram remembered the stories which had 
grown traditionary in reference to this strange man, 
which had come upon him like the shadow of a night, 
and was making himself at home in his old place, 
after so long an absence that the dead people, dead and 
buried for years, would have had more right to be at 
home in any familiar spot than he. Ethan Brand, it 
was said, had conversed with Satan himself in the 
lurid blaze of this very kiln. The legend had been 
matter of mirth heretofore, but looked grimly now. 
According to this tale, before Ethan had departed on 
his search he had been accustomed to evoke a fiend 
from the hot furnace of the lime-kiln, night after 
night, in order to confer with him about the Unpar- 
donable Sin ; the man and the fiend, each laboring to 
frame the image of some mode of guilt which could 
neither be atoned for nor forgiven. And, with the 
first gleam of light upon the mountain top, the fiend 
crept in at the iron door, there to abide the intensest 
element of fire, until again summoned forth to share 
in the dreadful task of extending man's possible guilt 
beyond the scope of Heaven's else infinite mercy. 

While the lime-burner was struggling with the 
horrors of these thoughts, Ethan Brand rose from the 

11 



162 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

log and flung open the door of the kiln. The action 
was in such accordance with the idea in Bertram's 
mind that he almost expected to see the evil one issue 
forth red hot from the raging furnace. 

"Hold, hold !" cried he, with a tremulous attempt 
to laugh, for he was ashamed of his fears, although 
they over-mastered him. " Don't, for mercy's sake, 
bring out your devil now !" 

"Man!" sternly replied Ethan Brand, "what need 
have I of the devil ? I have left him far behind me 
on my track. It is with such half-way sinners as you 
that he busies himself. Fear not, because I open the 
door. I do but act by old custom, and am going to 
trim your fire like a lime-burner, as I was once." 

He stirred the vast coals, thrust in more wood, and 
bent forwards to gaze into the hollow prison-house of 
fire, regardless of the fierce glow that reddened upon 
his face. The lime-burner sat watching him, and half- 
suspected his strange guest of a purpose, if not to 
evoke a fiend, at least to plunge bodily into the flames, 
and thus vanish from the sight of man. Ethan Brand, 
however, drew quietly back, and closed the door of the 
kiln. 

" I have looked," said he, " into many a human 
heart that was seven times hotter with sinful passion 
than your furnace is with fire. But I found not 
there what I sought. No, not the Unpardonable 
Sin !" 

"What is the Unpardonable Sin?" asked the lime 



BERTRAM, THE LIME-BURNER. 163 

burner, and then he shrank further from his com- 
panion, trembling lest his question should be answered. 

"It is a sin that grew within my own breast/' re- 
plied Ethan Brand, standing erect, with a pride that 
distinguishes all enthusiasts of his stamp ; "a sin 
that grew nowhere else ! The sin of an intellect that 
triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man 
and reverence for God, and sacrificed everything to 
its own mighty claims ! The only sin that deserves a 
recompense of immortal agony ! Freely, were it to 
do again, would I incur the guilt. Unshrinkingly I 
accept the retribution I" 

11 The man's head is turned," muttered the lime- 
burner to himself. " He may be a sinner, like the rest 
of us, nothing more likely, but I '11 be sworn he 's a 
madman too." 

Nevertheless, he felt very uncomfortable at his 
situation, alone with Ethan Brand on the wild moun- 
tain side, and was right glad to hear the rough mur- 
mur of tongues and footsteps of what seemed a pretty 
numerous party, stumbling over the stones and rust- 
ling through the under-brush. Soon appeared the 
whole lazy regiment that was wont to invest the 
village tavern, comprehending three or four indivi- 
duals who had drank flip beside the bar-room fire 
through all the winters, and smoked their pipes be- 
neath the stoop through all the summers, since Ethan 
brand's departure. Laughing boisterously and min- 
gling all their voices together in unceremonious talk, 



164 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

they now burst into the moonshine and narrow 
streaks of fire-light that illuminated the open space 
before the lime-kiln. Bertram set the door ajar 
again, flooding the spot with light, that the whole 
company might get a fair view of Ethan Brand, and 
he of them. 

There, among other old acquaintances, was a once 
ubiquitous man, now almost extinct, but whom we 
were formerly sure to encounter at the hotel of every 
thriving village throughout the country. It was 
the stage agent. The present specimen of the genus 
was a wilted and smoke-dried man, wrinkled and red 
nosed, in a smartly-cut brown bob-tailed coat, with 
brass buttons, who, for a length of time unknown 
had kept his desk and corner in the bar-room, and 
was still puffing what seemed to be the same cigar 
that he had lighted twenty years ago. He had great 
fame as a dry joker, though, perhaps, less on account 
of any intrinsic humor, than from a certain flavor of 
brandy toddy and tobacco smoke, which impregnated 
all his ideas and expressions, as well as his person. 

Another well-remembered, though strangely altered 
face was that of Lawyer Giles, as people still called 
him in courtesy — an elderly ragamuffin, in his soiled 
shirt sleeves and tow-linen trowsers. The poor fellow 
had been attorney in what he called his better days — 
a sharp practitioner, and in great vogue among the 
village litigants ; but flip, and sling, and toddy, and 
cock-tails, imbibed at all hours — morning, noon, and 



BERTRAM.. THE LIME-BURNER. 165 

night — bad caused him to slide from intellectual to 
various kinds and degrees of bodily labor, till at last, 
to adopt his own phrase, he slid into a soap vat. In 
other words, Giles was now a soap-boiler in a small 
way. He had come to be but the fragment of a human 
being — a part of one foot having been chopped off by 
an axe, and an entire hand torn away by the devilish 
grip of a steam-engine. Yet, though the corporeal 
hand was gone, a spiritual member remained ; for, 
stretching forth the stump, Giles steadfastly averred 
that he felt an invisible thumb and finger with as 
vivid a sensation as before the real one was amputated. 
A maimed and miserable wretch he was ; but one never- 
theless on whom the world could not trample, and had 
no right to scorn, either in this or any previous stage 
of his misfortunes, since he had still kept up the 
courage and spirit of a man, asked nothing in char- 
ity, and with his one hand — and that the left one — 
fought in stern battle against want and hostile circum- 
stances. 

Among the throng, too, came another personage, 
who, with certain points of similarity to Lawyer 
Giles, had many more of difference. It was the vil- 
lage doctor, a man of some fifty years, whom, at an 
earlier period of his life, we should have introduced 
as paying a professional visit to Ethan Brand, during 
the latter's supposed insanity. He was now a pur- 
pled-visaged, rude and brutal, yet half-gentlemanly 
figure, with something wild, ruined and desperate in 



166 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

his talk, and in all the details of his gesture and man- 
ners. Brandy possessed this man like an evil spirit, 
and made him as surly and savage as a wild beast, 
and as miserable as a lost soul ; but there was sup- 
posed to be in him such wonderful skill, such native 
gifts of healing, beyond any which medical science 
could impart, that society caught hold of him, and 
would not let him sink out of its reach. So, swaying 
to and fro on his horse, and grumbling thick accents 
at the bedside, he visited all the sick-chambers for 
miles about among the mountain towns, and some- 
times raised a dying man, as it were by a miracle, or 
quite as often, no doubt, sent his patient to a grave 
that was dug many a year too soon. The doctor had 
an everlasting pipe in his mouth : and as somebody 
said, in allusion to his habit of swearing, it was always 
alight with hell fire. 

The three worthies pressed forward, and greeted 
Ethan Brand each after his own fashion, earnestly 
inviting him to partake of the contents of a certain 
black bottle, in which, as they averred, he would find 
something far better worth seeking for than the Un- 
pardonable Sin. No mind which has wrought itself, 
by intense and solitary meditation, into a high state 
of enthusiasm, can endure this kind of contact with 
low and vulgar modes of thought and feeling to 
which Ethan Brand was now subjected. It made him 
doubt, and, strange to say, it was a painful doubt, 
whether he had indeed found the Unpardonable Sin 



THE LIME-BURNER. 167 

and found it within himself. The whole question on 
which he had exhausted life, and more than life, looked 
like a delusion. 

"Leave me," he said bitterly, "ye brute beasts, 
that have made yourselves so, shrivelling up your souls 
with fiery liquors ! I have done with you. Years and 
years ago I groped into your hearts and found nothing 
there for my purpose. Get ye gone !" 

" Why, you uncivil scoundrel," cried the fierce doc- 
tor, "is that the way you respond to the kindness of 
your best friends ? Then let me tell you the truth. 
You have no more found the Unpardonable Sin than 
yonder boy Joe has. You are but a crazy fellow. I 
told you so twenty years ago ; neither better nor worse 
than a crazy fellow, and the fit companion of old Hum- 
phrey here.!' 

He pointed to an old man, shabbily dressed, with 
long white hair, thin visage and unsteady eyes. For 
some years past this aged person had been wandering 
about among the hills, inquiring of all travellers whom 
he met for his daughter. The girl, it seemed, had gone 
off with a company of circus performers, and occa- 
sionally tidings of her came to the village, and fine 
stories were told of her glittering appearance as she rode 
on horseback in the ring or performed marvellous feats 
on the tight-rope. 

The white-haired father now approached Ethan 
Brand, and gazed unsteadily into his face. 

"They tell me you have oeen all over the earth." 



168 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

said he, wringing his hands with earnestness. " You 
must have seen my daughter, for she makes a great fig- 
ure in the world, and everybody goes to see her. Did 
she send any word to her old father, or say when she is 
coming back V 1 

Ethan Brand's eye quailed beneath the old man's. 
That daughter, from whom he so earnestly desired a 
word of greeting, Ethan Brand had made the subject of 
a psychological experiment, and wasted, and perhaps 
annihilated her soul in the process. 

" Yes," murmured he, turning away from the hoary 
wanderer, "it is no delusion. There is an Unpar- 
donable Sin !" 

While these things were passing, a merry scene was 
going forward in the area of a cheerful light, beside the 
spring, and before the door of the hut. 

A number of the youth of the village, young men 
and girls, had hurried up the hill-side, impelled by 
curiosity to see Ethan Brand, the hero of so many a 
legend familiar to their childhood. Finding nothing, 
however, very remarkable in his aspect — nothing but a 
sunburnt wayfarer in plain garb and dusty shoes, who 
sat looking into the fire, as if he fancied pictures among 
the coals, these young people speedily grew tired of 
observing him. As it happened, there was other 
amusement at hand. An old German Jew, travelling 
with a diorama on his back, was passing down the 
mountain road towards the village just as the party 
turned aside from it ; and in the hopes of eking out 



BERTRAM, THE LIME-BURNER. 169 

the profits of the da} 7 , the showman had kept them com- 
pany to the lime-kiln. 

" Come, old Dutchman," cried one of the young men, 
" let us see your pictures, if you can swear they are 
worth looking at." 

" Oh, yes, captain," answered the Jew — whether as 
a matter of courtesy or craft, he styled everybody cap- 
tain — " I shall show you, indeed, some very superb 
pictures !" 

So, placing the box in a proper position, he invited 
the young men and girls to look through the glass ori- 
fices of the machine, and proceeded to exhibit a series of 
the most outrageous scratchings and daubings, as speci- 
mens of the fine arts, that ever an itinerant showman had 
the face to impose upon his circle of spectators. The 
pictures were worn out, moreover — tattered, full of 
cracks and wrinkles, dingy with tobacco smoke, and 
otherwise in a most pitiable condition. Some purported 
to be the cities, public edifices and ruined castles in 
Europe ; others represented Napoleon's battles and 
Nelson's sea fights ; and in the midst of these might be 
seen a gigantic, brown, hairy hand, which might have 
oeen mistaken for the hand of destiny, though in truth it 
was only the showman pointing his forefinger to various 
scenes of the conflict, while its owner gave historical illus- 
trations. When, with much merriment at its abominable 
deficiency of merit, the exhibition was concluded, the 
German bade little Joe put his head into the box. 
Viewed through the magnifying glasses, the boy's round 



170 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

rosy visage assumed the strangest imaginable aspect of 
an immense Titanic child, the mouth grinning broadly, 
and the eyes and every other feature overflowing with 
fun at the joke. Suddenly, however, that merry face 
turned pale, and its expression turned to horror, for this 
easily impressed and excitable child had become sensible 
that the eyes of Ethan Brand were fixed upon him 
through the glass. 

" You make the little man to be afraid, captain,*' 
said the German Jew, turning up the dark and strong 
outline of his visage from his stooping posture. "But 
look again, and, by chance, I shall cause you to see 
something that is very fine, upon my word !" 

Ethan Brand gazed into the box for an instant, and 
then starting back, looked fixedly at the German. What 
had he seen ? Nothing, apparently ; for a curious 
youth, who had peeped in almost at the same moment, 
beheld only a vacant space of canvas. 

" I remember you, now," muttered Ethan Brand to 
the showman. 

"Ah, captain," whispered the Jew of Nuremburg, 
with a dark smile, " I find it to be a heavy matter in my 
show-box — this Unpardonable Sin ! By my faith, cap- 
tain, it has wearied my shoulders this day to carry it 
over the mountain." 

"Peace!" answered Ethan Brand, sternly, "or get 
thee into the furnace yonder." 

The Jew's exhibition had scarcely concluded, when a 
great elderly dog — who seemed to be his own master, as 



BERTRAM, THE LIME-BURNER. 171 

no person in the company laid claim to him — saw fit to 
render himself the object of public notice. Hitherto he 
had shown himself as a very quiet, well-disposed old 
dog, going round from one to another, and, by way of 
being sociable, offering his rough head to be patted by 
any kindly hand that would take so much trouble. But 
now, all of a sudden this grave and venerable quadruped, 
of his own mere motion, and without the slightest sug- 
gestion from anybody else, began to run round after 
his tail, which, to heighten the absurdity of the scene, 
was a great deal shorter than it should have been. 
Never was seen such headlong eagerness in pursuit of an 
object that could not possibly be attained ; never was 
heard such a tremendous outbreak of growling, snarling, 
barking and snapping, as if one end of the ridiculous 
brute's body were at deadly and most unforgivable 
enmity with the other. Faster and faster round about 
went the cur, and faster and still faster fled the unap- 
proachable brevity of his tail, and louder and fiercer 
grew his yells of rage and animosity, until utterly 
exhausted, and as far from the goal as ever, the foolish 
old dog ceased his performance as suddenly as he had 
begun it. The next moment he was as quiet, mild, 
sensible, and respectable in his deportment as when he 
first scraped acquaintance with the company. 

As may be supposed, the exhibition was greeted 
with universal laughter, clapping of hands, and shouts of 
'■ Encore,' 7 to which the canine performer responded by 
wagging all that there was to wag o** his tail, but 



172 J0SEPH1JSE GALLERY. 

appeared totally unable to repeat his very successful 
effort to amuse the spectators. 

Meanwhile, Ethan Brand had resumed his seat upon 
the log, and moved, it might be, by a perception of 
some remote analogy between his own case and that of 
this self-pursuing cur, he broke into the awful laugh 
which, more than any other token, expressed the condi- 
tion of his inward being. And at that moment the 
merriment of the party was at an end ; they stood 
about, dreading lest the inauspicious sound should be 
reverberated around the horizon , and that mountain 
would thunder it to mountain, and so the sound be pro- 
longed upon their ears. Then, whispering to one 
another that it was late ; that the moon was almost 
down ; that the August night was growing chill, they 
hurried homewards, leaving the lime-burner and little 
Joe to deal as they might with their unwelcome guest. 
Save for these three human beings, the open space on 
the hill-side was a solitude, set in a vast gloom of forest. 
Beyond that darksome verge, the fire-lights glimmered 
on the stately trunks and almost black foliage of pines, 
intermixed with the lighter verdure of sapling oaks 
maples and poplars, while here and there lay the gigan- 
tic copses of trees, decaying on the leaf-strewn soil. 
And it seemed to little Joe — a timorous and imaginative 
child — that the silent forest was holding its breath until 
some fearful thing should happen. 

Ethan Brand thrust more wood into the fire, and 
closed the door of the kiln ; then looking over his 



THE LIME-BURNER, 173 

shoulder at the lime-burner and his son, he bade, rather 
than advised, them to retire to rest. 

"For myself, I cannot sleep," said he; "I have 
matters that it concerns me to meditate upon. I will 
watch the fire, as I used to do in the old time." 

"And call the devil out of the furnace to keep you 
company, I suppose," muttered Bertram, who had been 
making intimate acquaintance with the black bottle 
above mentioned. "But watch if you like, and call as 
many devils as you like ! For my part, I shall be all 
the better for a snooze. Come, Joe !" 

As the boy followed his father into the hut, he 
looked back at the wayfarer, and tears came into his 
eyes, for his tender spirit had an intuition of the bleak 
and terrible loneliness in which this man had enveloped 
himself. 

When they were gone, Ethan Brand sat listening to 
the crackling of the kindled wood, and looking at the 
spirits of fire that issued through the chinks of the door. 
These trifles, however, once so familiar, had but the 
slightest hold of his attention, while deep within his 
mind he was reviewing the gradual but marvellous 
change that had been wrought upon him by the search 
to which he had devoted himself. He remembered how 
the night dew had fallen upon him ; how the dark forest 
had whispered to him ; how the stars had gleamed upon 
him, a simple and loving man, watching his fire in the 
years gone by, and even musing as it burned. He 
remembered with what tenderness, with what love and 



174 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

sympathy for mankind, and what pity for human guilt 
and woe he had first begun to contemplate those ideas 
which afterwards became the inspiration of his life ; with 
what reverence he had then looked into the heart of 
man, viewing it as a temple originally divine, and, 
however desecrated, still to be held sacred by a brother 
with what awful fear he had deprecated his pursuit, and 
prayed that the Unpardonable Sin might never be 
revealed to him. Then ensued that vast intellectual 
development, which, in its progress, disturbed the 
counterpoise between his mind and heart. 

The idea that possessed his life had operated as a 
means of education ; it had raised him from the level 
of an unlettered laborer, to stand on a star-light laden 
eminence, whither the philosophers of the earth, with 
the lore of the universe, might vainly strive to clam- 
ber after him. So much for the intellect ! But 
where was the heart ? That, indeed, had withered, 
had contracted, had hardened, had perished ? It had 
ceased to partake of the universal throb. He had lost 
hold of the magnetic chain of humanity. He was 
no longer a brother man, opening the chambers or 
the dungeons of our common nature by the key of 
holy sympathy, which gave him a right to share in 
all its secrets ; he was now a cold observer, looking 
on mankind as the subject of his experiment, and at 
length converting man and woman to be his puppets, 
and pulling the wires that moved them to such degrees 
of crime as were demanded for his study. 



THE LIME-BURNER. 175 

Thus Ethan Brand became a fiend. He began to be 
so from the moment that his moral nature had ceased 
to keep the pace of improvement with his intellect. 
And now, as his highest effort, and inevitable de- 
velopment — as the bright and gorgeous flower, and 
rich, delicious fruit of his life's labor — he had dis- 
covered the Unpardonable Sin. 

• ; What more have I to seek ? What more to 
achieve ?" said Ethan Brand to himself. " My task is 
done, and well done !" 

Starting from the log with a certain alacrity in 
his gait, and ascending the hillock of earth that was 
raised against the stone circumference of the lime- 
kiln, he thus reached the top of the structure. It 
was a space of perhaps ten feet across, from edge 
to edge, presenting a view of the upper surface of 
the immense mass of broken marble with which the 
kiln was heaped. All these innumerable blocks and 
fragments of marble were red hot and vividly on fire, 
sending up great spouts of blue flame, which quivered 
aloft and danced madly, as within a magic circle, 
and sank and rose again, with continual and multi- 
tudinous activity. As the lonely man bent forwards 
over this terrible body of fire, the blasting heat 
smote up against his person with a breath that, it might 
be supposed, would have scorched and shrivelled him 
up in a moment. 

Ethan Brand stood erect, and raised his arms on 
high. The blue flame played upon his face, and im- 



176 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

parted the wild and ghastly light which alone could 
have suited his expression ; it was that of a fiend 
on the verge of plunging into his gulf of intensest tor- 
ment. 

" Oh, Mother Earth," cried he, " who art no more 
my mother, and into whose bosom this frame shall 
never be resolved ? Oh, mankind, whose brotherhood 
I have cast off and trampled thy great heart beneath 
my feet ! Oh. stars of heaven, that shone on me of 
old, as if to light me onwards and upwards ! Fare- 
well all, and forever ! Come deadly element of fire, 
henceforth my familiar friend ! Embrace me as I do 
thee !" 

That night the sound of a fearful peal of laughter 
rolled heavily through the sleep of the lime-burner 
and his little son ; dim shapes of horror and anguish 
haunted their dreams, and seemed still present in 
the rude hovel when they opened their eyes to the 
daylight. 

" Up boy, up !" cried the lime-burner, staring about 
him. " Thank Heaven, the night is gone at last ; 
and rather than pass another such, I would watch 
my lime-kiln, wide awake, for a twelvemonth. This 
Ethan Brand, with his humbug of an Unpardonable 
Sin, has done me no such mighty favor in taking my 
place." 

He issued from the hut, followed by little Joe, who 
kept fast hold of his father's hand. The early sun- 
shine was already pouring its gold upon the raoun- 



BERTRAM, THE LIME-BURNER. 177 

tain tops, and though the valleys were still in shadow, 
they smiled cheerfully in the promise of the bright 
day that was hastening onwards. The village, com- 
pletely shut in by hills, which swelled away gently 
about it, looked as if it had rested peacefully in the 
hollow of the great hand of Providence. Each dwel- 
ling was distinctly visible ; the little spires of the 
two churches pointed upwards, and caught a fore- 
glimmering of brightness from the sun-gilt skies upon 
their weathercocks. The tavern was astir, and the 
figure of the old smoke-dried stage agent, cigar in 
mouth, was seen beneath the stoop. Old Graylock 
was glorified with a golden cloud upon his head. 
Scattered likewise upon the breasts of the surrounding 
mountains there were heaps of hoary mists, in fan- 
tastic shapes, some of them far down in the valley, 
others high up towards the summits, and still others 
of the same family of mist and clouds, hovering in 
the golden radiance of the upper atmosphere. Step- 
ping from one to another of the clouds that rested 
on the hills, and thence to the loftier brotherhood 
that sailed in the air, it seemed almost as if mortal 
man might thus ascend into the heavenly regions. 
Earth was so mingled with sky that it was a day-dream 
to look at it. 

To supply that charm of the familiar and homely 
which nature so readily adopts into a scene like this, 
the stage-coach was rattling down the mountain road, 
and the driver sounding his horn, while each caught 

12 



178 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

up the notes and intertwined them into a rich and varied 
and elaborate harmony, of which the original performer 
could lay claim to little share. The great hills played a 
concert among themselves, each contributing a strain of 
airy sweetness. 

Little Joe's face brightened at once. 

11 Dear father," cried he, skipping cheerily to and 
fro, "that strange man is gone, and the sky and the 
mountains all seem glad of it !" 

" Yes," growled the lime-burner, with an oath, " but 
he has let the fire go down, and no thanks to him, if live 
hundred bushels o* lime are not spoilt. If I catch the 
fellow hereabouts again, I shall feel like tossing him into 
the furnace !" 

With his long pole in his hand, he ascended to the 
top of the kiln. After a moment's pause, he called to 
bis son : 

" Come up here, Joe !" said he. 

So little Joe ran up the hillock and stood by his 
father's side. The marble was burnt into perfect, snow- 
white lime. But, on its surface, in the midst of the cir- 
cle — snow-white too, and thoroughly converted into 
lime — lay a human skeleton, in the attitude of a person 
who, after long toil, lies down to a long repose. Within 
the ribs — strange to say — was the shape of a human 
heart. 

" Was the fellow's heart made of marble ?" cried 
Bertram, in some perplexity at this phenomenon. " At 
any rate, it is burnt into what is called special good 



BERTRAM, THE LIME-BURNER. 179 

lime ; and, taking all the bones together, my kiln is half 
a bushel the richer by him." 

So saying, the rude lime-burner lifted his pole, and 
letting it fall upon the skeleton, the relics of Ethan 
Brand were crumbled into fragments. 



MADAME JUNOT. 

DUCHESS d'aLBRANTES. 

From her mother earth's kind bosom, 
Once a vine with tender blossom 

Lifted up its pretty head. 
Glad within, how glad without her, 
Seemed the world that lay about her 

With its sunshine overspread. 

In her loveliness and meekness, 
Knowing all her nature's weakness, 

And that she alone must fall ; 
Said she, " This can be no longer, 
I must lean on something stronger, 

If I grow or live at all. 

" All these trees that stand about me 
Are but rugged things without me, 

Wherefore should I be afraid ? 
If I well perform my duty, 
If I bring them grace and beauty, 

Surely they will give me aid." 







B.Lippinc 



182 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

Vain example, vain adviser, 

Still the world will grow no wiser, 

Still along our way we meet 
Those from whose unpitying bosom 
Has fallen off the tender blossom, 

That lies broken at their feet. 



A MULE RIDE IN MADEIRA. 

BY METTA VICTORIA VICTOR. 

CHAPTER I. 

Isabel Berthiers' chamber overlooked the sea. It 
looked also to the south and west ; so that, from child- 
hood, she was accustomed to those never-tiring, ever- 
changing splendors which accompany the setting of the 
moon and sun. The silver car of the young moon, riding 
down into the deep, and the purple and golden magnifi- 
cence curtained about the horizon, and reflected in the 
ocean, were sights for which she waited. Her chamber 
was in a corner tower of her father's castle, for so the 
neighbors called the great, irregular stone mansion 
standing upon the shore, its turrets and battlements 
rising up from their rocky foundations, and mirrored, 
at times, in the waters at their base. Her window at 
the west had a balcony which overhung the waves for- 
ever sighing at the foot of the rock from which the 
tower uprose. At the south, it held in view a garden of 
many acres, rich with the fruits and flowers of the north 

188 



184 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

and south — the apple and orange leaning cheek to 
cheek, and everything beautiful, in the vegetation of 
two hemispheres, flourishing kindly in the Eden-like 
climate which distinguishes the island of Madeira. This 
magic climate, and all these " sweet influences" which 
encircled her in a peculiar atmosphere of beaaty and 
love, had conspired, with birth and education, to make 
her in mind and spirit as singularly beautiful as she was 
in person. 

When Isabel was about two years of age, her father 
had brought to this lovely home his young wife, dying 
of consumption, in the eager hope that the mild tempera- 
ture of the island, so free from the sudden changes 
which had chilled her life in England, might restore the 
health so precious to him. But the fair rose only 
renovated her bloom for a brief period, again to droop, 
and soon to perish, leaving him the forlornest mourner 
in the world, save for the comfort of the little bud its 
parent had left to his care. He could never make up 
his mind to return to his former busy habits of life in 
London, but had stayed on, from year to year, in the 
paradise hallowed by the last word and smile of her he 
had lost. Her mother's grave, smiling with every 
beauty which love could win from nature to adorn it, 
lay in view from Isabel's south window, consecrating the 
whole garden to tenderness and reverence. What a 
wilderness that garden was, where angels might have 
delighted to lose themselves in its profusion of sweets ! 

Isabel loved to sit on her balcony and watch the 



A MULE-RIDE IN MADEIRA. 185 

ships coming up from the horizon, their glimmering 
sails bearing steadily on into nearer view, until they 
made the port of the city of Funchal, just out of whose 
suburbs she dwelt. These " white-winged messengers" 
were full of poetry to her. She did not think of the 
rough sailor-life on board. They were all like carrier- 
doves from flying, every region of the earth, and bearing 
beneath their wings messages and treasures. 

One day, she sat on her balcony, now reading a lit- 
tle, and now looking off on the ocean, when a light 
cloud, rising from the horizon, fixed her attention ; and 
she soon resolved it into the smoke of a steamer, which 
puffed steadily into sight, until it anchored about half a 
mile out of Funchal. 

" Letters and books for papa from his friends in Eng- 
land, I hope," said Isabel, as she lifted a small glass 
which lay by her side. " But no ! very likely there is 
none, for those are the stars and stripes of America 
which flutter from the mast. How much uglier," she 
continued to muse, " those steamships are than the 
slower, less certain, but more graceful sail vessels ! 
There never can be anything romantic about a steamer 
— of course not!" — with a shrug of her lovely shoulders 
— " while Argo, and all her legitimate descendants, are 
full of poetry. But these ungainly things, with their 
horrible smoke-pipes and their business-like air !" And 
the girl returned m her book without a single thrill of 
her happy heart to tell her that, within that same 
" ungainly steamer," which u never could be romantic," 



186 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

all the romance of her life was awaiting its evolve- 
ment. 

By the time her father returned from his daily visit 
to town, she had forgotten to inquire even if there was 
any news ; but, as she glanced out once again upon the 
moonlit splendor of the sea, just before she resigned her- 
self to the slumber of health and innocence, she saw the 
glimmering folds of the American flag stretched out to 
embrace the breeze which blew from land, perfumed 
with the dewy incense of a million flowers. Perhaps the 
young engineer, who had stolen upon deck to enjoy the 
magical beauty of the scene, as an odor of roses wafted 
by him on silent wings, and floated away forever, was 
as far from dreaming from what garden that incense 
came, as was the maiden from thinking over whose head 
fluttered that graceful banner. 

The next day, Isabel was in one of those restless 
moods, when, from very excess of youthful spirits, she 
could not decide upon how to amuse herself. She had 
taken her usual siesta ; and her father would not be 
home until sunset. In the chamber adjoining her own, 
there was an old-fashioned bureau filled with finery 
which had once adorned her mother. Isabel kept the 
keys of the drawers, for there were stores of costly 
jewels, and laces of great intrinsic value, besides their 
priceless worth as the ornaments which had once 
heightened the beauty of the beloved dead. Isabel was 
too youthful ever to appropriate any of these things to 
her wear ; but she had, more than once, stolen an hour 



A MULE-RIDE IN MADEIRA. 187 

of glory in them, with her mirror and her dressing-maid 
for her only admirers. Upon this occasion, having 
begun and ended half a dozen different employments, 
she bethought herself of the bureau and its contents. 
''Come, now, Florette," she laughed, " and change me 
into an old-fashioned English girl. I want you to dress 
my hair precisely like mamma's in this portrait. I wish 
to see if I will not look like her. Papa thinks I resem- 
ble her so much." 

" Ah, yes ! I think you are the image of that pic- 
ture, mademoiselle. They do say your mother was very 
beautiful." 

Isabel received this rather undisguised flattery of 
her French maid with the nonchalance of a gay heart 
that has not yet learned to crave admiration as its 
sweetest food. 

11 Well, let us see how much skill you have, Florette. 
But first let me get the jewel-box ; for you will need the 
pins to fasten my hair. Mother has some rose-buds in 
hers, too. Eun, Florette, and bring those I just put in 
the vase. They say that my mother was passionately 
fond of flowers — that she always kept them about her 
person," she mused, as she took her seat in a small 
cushioned chair before the glass, and awaited the return 
of the girl with the roses. 

In a brief time, by the ready and loving art of 
Florette, the curls, which usually floated at will upon 
her shoulders, were arranged like those of the portrait — 
a rich mass of them twisted in a coil at the back of her 



188 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

head, and the rest looped back from the delicate tem- 
ples, and fastened in clusters behind the ears, so as to 
drop about the neck and bosom. Three large pins, the 
heads of which were formed of pink topazes, richly set 
about with pearls, held these in place ; while a dainty 
rose-bud, with its green leaves, shone out here and there 
amid the dark luxuriance of tresses. 

"And now the dress — the very same dress!" criec} 
Isabel. 

Her simple white robe was cast aside ; and the 
heavy brocaded silk, of a pale rose-color, was taken 
from its resting-place, and its folds shaken out. 

"Ah, del P 1 cried Florette, "how exquisite — char- 
mant /" when her youthful mistress had donned the 
dress to her satisfaction. 

Truly, it was very becoming, with its rich trimmings 
of thread-lace falling like mist about the white shoulders 
and dimpled arms of the wearer. It was very short in 
the waist, and the belt which girdled it fastened in front 
with a jewelled brooch of the same style as the hair-pins. 
In front, the skirt was short enough to give glimpses of 
the small feet in their rose-colored slippers ; and behind 
was a small train trimmed with costly lace. There was 
a brooch, also, with which Isabel fastened a moss-rose in 
the bosom ; and small clasps to loop up the wide lace 
flounces of the sleeves. Then there were bracelets for 
the arms, and a lustrous necklace. 

" One would say the portrait was alive, and had 
come out of its frame, and walked about the room," 



A MULE-RIDE IN MADEIRA. 189 

exclaimed the maid, with all kinds of lively French 
gesticulations. "You ought to show yourself to Mon- 
sieur Berthiers, when he returns. You are the image 
of your mother." 

4 'Ah, no! I would not dare to do that 1" replied 
Isabel, a pensive shade passing over her brilliant coun- 
tenance. "It would startle him too much; it would 
grieve him ; for he would remember how my mother 
wore this very dress the night upon which they were 
betrothed. And they were so happy ! and my poor 
mamma died so young ! Perhaps I, too, shall perish just 
when I am the gayest and happiest." 

" Heaven prevent it I" ejaculated Florette, fer- 
vently. 

The next moment, the young girl smiled. 

" It is not so bad to die, after all, if it were not for 
leaving one's friends. I do not see why we should 
dread it. But I am certainly too happy to think of 
death this afternoon. Papa will not be home until sun- 
set ; and I shall wear these things until I see him 
coming. I fancy myself a different person from little 
Isabel Berthiers." 

After flitting about the house for awhile, she took 
up her station in the veranda, a modern addition to the 
old castle, rendered desirable in that beautiful climate, 
tvhere people almost lived in the open air. Here she 
sat, enjoying the simple luxury of breathing and living 
where the air was delicious, the earth lovely, and the 
heavens serene. On either side, separated only by 



190 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

their extensive grounds, the boundaries of which were 
marked by hedges of rose and myrtle, or by low walks, 
were the villas of her neighbors. In front, the pictu- 
resque road, winding amid thickets of bloom — where the 
geranium climbed amid the dark green of the chestnut 
and the orange nourished beside the Norway pine, and 
vineyards lay scattered amid them all — led away and 
ascended the mountains which stood in full view, the 
luxurious greenness of their wooded heights broken by 
silvery glimpses of cascades and the cool grey of 
rocks. 

Isabel's thoughts, like her eyes, had ascended from 
height to height, until she was finally gazing into 
the blue sky, and dreaming of her mother's home 
there, with many more earthly fancies mingled up in 
her vision, as the odors of flowers were mingled up in 
air, when her reverie was interrupted by the sight of a 
party of horsemen dashing at reckless speed down the 
mountain side, and sweeping forwards upon the plain 
with a merry clamor of shouts and laughter, which 
grew louder as they came within closer hearing. They 
appeared to be a party of foreigners who had been 
ascending the Corral, visiting the church ot Our Lady 
of the Mount and the Barra, and were evidently young 
and wild, for they dashed ahead with a noisy disre- 
gard of the appalled faces and warning gestures of 
their guides, who struggled in vain to keep near 
them. 

" Americans, I have no doubt !" murmured Isabel, 



A MULE-RIDE IN MADEIRA. 191 

as she watched their mad career. " They are so reck- 
less !" 

She was considerably surprised when, as they came 
opposite the house, two of the party diverged from the 
road, and, allowing the others to pass on, checked their 
steeds before the stone lions who kept watch over the 
portals of the gate. They waited until their grooms 
came up, and, throwing the reins to them, entered, and 
passed along the walk, still laughing and talking, rather 
too loudly, Isabel thought • and the indignant blood 
rushed to her cheeks. It was evident that they did not 
observe her, her seat being sheltered by a vine-wreathed 
column, for one of them exclaimed, almost as they 
placed their feet on the veranda: " A paradise ! a per- 
fect paradise ! It ought to have its Peri." 

"Hush! there she is — your Peri — now," almost 
whispered the other. 

If the young girl had felt half indignant at their 
previous merriment, she could scarcely check a saucy 
smile now at the sudden change in their demeanor as 
they came into her subduing presence. She arose, in 
all the glory of her jewelled attire, and the still greater 
glory of her unequalled beauty, and greeted them with 
a slight bend of the head. They were astonished, 
almost to embarrassment, and plainly were not certain 
whether they had chanced upon the Peri they were 
speaking of, or a mortal. Yet the dress was hardly 
appropriate to a bond fide Peri ; besides, she had no 
wings, as they could see ; neither was it that of any of the 



192 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

Portuguese, French, or English ladies they had seen at 
Madeira ; and it was very gorgeous to be spending a 
solitary hour of the day in. 

The roguish dimple that just peeped, and then re- 
treated from the corners of her mouth, was the first 
thing which restored them to their powers of speech. 
It acted like an electric shock upon the foremost of the 
intruders, who, bringing his arms suddenly up, and re- 
moving the hat from his head, with a bow as graceful in 
its way as her own, said : " Pardon our intrusion. We 
have been up the mountain, and, being almost dead with 
thirst and fatigue, ventured to call and beg for a glass of 
water." 

" You seemed to be very much exhausted, I thought, 
as you came along," replied the young girl, with a mock 
gravity, which brought a flush to his brown cheek as he 
recalled the manner of his entrance upon the stage of 
her observation. However, he smiled — a frank, confess- 
ing smile, which won a merry response from the maiden, 
and they were friends without further apology. 

" I am sorry my father is not at home to make you 
welcome, gentlemen," continued Isabel ; " but if you 
will take seats for a moment, I will order a servant to 
attend you." 

She motioned to a rustic sofa, which stood between 
two pillars, and disappeared in the hall, her silken train 
sweeping grandly after her. 

I should call this an adventure worthy of the scene/' 
whispered one to the other, as they seated themselves, 



A MULE-RIDE IN MADEIRA. 193 

* What manner of youthful dame or princess may this 
be ? I shall begin to think that we are on an enchanted 
island. 7 ' 

His companion did not answer him. He was the 
one who had addressed the young girl ; and he now 
sat staring at the door where she had disappeared. Those 
deep blue eyes, whose smiles he had so unexpectedly 
encountered, were too much like the ideal eyes which 
had floated before his imagination for years for their 
light not to pierce into his soul. So he sat in stupid 
silence, staring at space, but seeing before him that 
exquisite vision of youthful womanhood. She was of a 
type of beauty, as rare as it was excellent when found 
— the delicate perfection of features peculiar to the 
north, softened by the rich hues, the warmth, the grace 
of the south. Her demeanor, like her beauty, was 
her own — of no class or nation — full of interest and 
intangible charms of modesty, youth, and unconscious 
loveliness. 

In a few moments, a servant parted the Venetian 
shutters of a window which opened upon the veranda, 
and asked them into a cool, high room, but lightly fur- 
nished as a summer apartment. Here, upon a table, 
were baskets of fruit gathered from the profuse variety 
of the garden, and flasks of native wine, mellow and 
luscious with age. With that unstudied hospitality so 
delightfully practised by many southern people, the 
young lady- honored the impromptu entertainment with 
her own presence, and pressed its acceptance upon her 

13 



194 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

stranger guests, who were in no way loth to prolong 
the time by dallying with the fruits which they praised 
as they ate. 

"If you only knew, mademoiselle,' 7 said the younger 
and more fascinated of the two, again recovering the 
use of his speech, " the weariness, the intolerable same- 
ness and ennui of an ocean voyage of three months, 
varied by but one visit to terra Jirma, you would be 
tempted to excuse the boisterous spirits which refused 
to be quelled when, on this first day of our release 
from shipboard, we found ourselves breathing this ex- 
hilarating atmosphere, and entranced by the beauty of 
this island — doubly beautiful to us, who have been so 
long out of sight of trees and flowers. These oranges 
and pears, you may guess, have an added sweetness, 
after the salt rations of the past few weeks. I declare 
to you, when we came tumbling down the hill-side, I 
was like one intoxicated upon ambrosia ; and I do not 
know when I should have regained my senses, had I 
not become suddenly aware of intruding my merriment 
upon a lady. In short," he added with a pleasant laugh, 
" I believe I am not quite in my senses yet." And his 
fine eyes rested upon Isabel with respectful admiration, 
which hinted what he was not at liberty to say. 

" Well, messieurs," answered the young girl, " it- 
makes me happy to see others so happy. A long voyage 
must indeed be a monstrous affair. The truth is that I, 
too, have been on a frolic to day ; and I did not dream 
that I was to be caught "— — 



A MULE-RIDE IN MADEIRA. 195 

Here Florette thrust her head in at the door, and 
called out, nervously : " Miss Isabel ! your father is 
coming ! He is on the veranda now !" And, without 
waiting for a word of apology, their young hostess fled 
from the room as if terrified ; and they saw her no more 
that day. 



CHAPTER II. 

That same evening, Mark Summers, 2d Assistant 
Engineer of the United States steamship " America," 
was leaning over the side of the vessel, gazing steadly 
towards the land. The odors of roses, which were occa- 
sionally wafted across his senses, had a deeper meaning 
than they had possessed for him the previous evening — 
for did not the light wind blow directly from a certain 
garden by the sea- shore, where — who knows ? — she 
might even at that moment be wandering ? And he 
murmured some lines from one of his favorite poets : — 

"There fell a silver, silken veil of light 
Upon the upturned faces of a thousand 
Roses, which grew in an enchanted garden, 
Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tip-toe — 
Fell on the upturned faces of these roses, 
That gave out, in return for the love-light, 
Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death — 
Fell on the upturned faces of these roses 
That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted 
By thee, and oy the poetry of thy presence." 



196 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

Here his friend and companion, who had shared with 
him the adventure of the day, came up, and tapped him 
on the shoulder. 

" I say, man, I have found out all about her. Now, 
you, who are too deeply interested to betray yourself by 
inquiring, ought to be much obliged to me." 

" Found out about whom, Harry ?" 

" Please don't affect such coolness. Her first name 
is Isabel. Her father's we already know, and that he is 
a wealthy Englishman residing on the island. He was 
very courteous to us, in his own house, as any gentle- 
man would be ; but I have no doubt that he is as proud 
as Lucifer, and would put a quick stop to any attempt 
of a couple of poor engineers becoming acquainted with 
his daughter. Although she is but eighteen, she is 
already known as the Beauty of Madeira. She is Mr. 
Berthiers' only child, and his idol." 

"I hope he does not tyrannize over her,' 7 said Mark. 
" I wonder what caused her flight and trepidation at the 
mere mention of his coming to-day. Perhaps he does 
not allow her to speak with any men but himself." 

" They say he lets her have her own way entirely. 
What caused her abrupt departure I am sure I cannot 
guess. But I have an idea. We have not spent all our 
idle hours upon our music, for the last few months, to 
put it to no good use. We can see from here how 
directly overlooking the sea her father's house is ; and I 
am told that her own chamber is in the tower which juts 
out upon the rock. So, for a serenade ! The ship's gig 



A MULE-RIDE IN MADEIRA. 197 

is at our service. We will invite some of the superior 
officers and Tom with his flute. Serenading the beauty 
of Madeira, by moonlight, in a boat beneath her balcony, 
will not be a bad occupation for a couple of young 
American Adventurers. What say V 1 

No sooner proposed than executed. The sailors got 
out the boat ; and those officers who were not already 
gone ashore were invited to join in the excursion. In 
less than an hour, the plash of their oars was heard at 
the foot of the rock ; and a strain of rich music, from 
three or four instruments exquisitely played, floated up 
into the castle. 

There was a glimmer of white drapery upon the 
balcony, a fair hand reaching over the balustrade ; and, 
at the end of the first piece, a bouquet dropped through 
the moonlight, and fell in the water near the boat. 
Mark Summers nearly lost his balance, and was in dan- 
ger of falling overboard in his eagerness to be the one 
to seize the prize. He secured it, and fastened it in his 
button-hole, resisting the passionate impulse which he 
felt to press it to his lips, for he did not wish to excite 
the ridicule of his companions. 

"Don't cherish that too fondly, Mark," laughed 
Harry, " for most likely it was the gift of the pretty 
waiting-maid whom we saw in attendance upon her mis- 
tress. " 

Mark secretly repelled the idea with scorn. Could 
his spiritual apprehension be at fault when it whispered 
him so loudly that her fingers had contrived the cunning 



198 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

arrangement of these flowers, and her breath had min- 
gled with their perfume ? No ! And he slept that 
night with the bouquet in his bosom, doubly assured of 
its origin by the " thanks, messieurs," which, faint as a 
dream, came, wafted in silvery cadence, from the bal- 
cony, as the last strain had ceased, and the boatmen 
resumed their oars. 

We have said that he slept ; but it was not until 
after hours of restless musing that he lost himself in 
slumber ; for the day had marked an era in his life. He 
had met the embodiment of all the sweet hopes of his 
youth ; and under what discouraging circumstances ! 
He might just as well have fallen desperately enamored 
of some star in the sky above him. She was an heiress : 
and her father was a haughty Englishman, who despised 
most likely, the very name of self-made merit. His ship 
was to stop but five days at Funchal, and then was to 
leave that, to him, heavenly home, for a long cruise by 
distant shores. Only five days, and no means of pro- 
curing an introduction to her father's house. Certainly, 
there was nothing to do but to forget the vision which 
haunted him. Easy task ! He smiled sardonically at 
the thought. 

The next morning, he was in rather a dangerous 
humor — dangerous to himself and his advancement, for 
he was in just that haughty and unhappy mood when he 
would not have borne a word or a look from the highest 
officer on the ship, which could have affronted his per- 
sonal dignity. And such affronts had not hitherto been 



A MULE-RIDE IN MADEIRA. 199 

unknown. His proud spirit had been often chafed by 
the insolence of his superiors ; and he had just that 
spark of American independence in his nature which 
threatened to ignite, and explode a magazine of wrath. 
He was a young man striving to raise himself, by the 
force of his own talents and indomitable will, to an hon- 
ored position. United with fine gifts of imagination and 
poetry, he had also the genius for mechanical invention 
and construction, which promised, though less pleasing 
to his fancy, more immediate reward in worldly emolu- 
ment and respect. So, being poor, and not at liberty to 
disregard the more profitable view of the matter, he had 
decided upon engineering as a profession for the next 
few years of his life, and had gone into the navy as a 
suitable field for his labor, as being a place where his 
undoubted talents would find recognition — and also a lit- 
tle, perhaps, from that love of travel and adventure so 
common to imaginative natures. He had not anticipated 
some of the trials of his position to a fiery and honorable 
spirit like his own ; for he had not dreamed of the 
supercilious contempt and even unmanly rudeness which 
he would be subjected to by those superior to him in 
rank. We do not wish to impugn the dignity of all the 
officers in the United States Navy, or the British, or 
any other navy ; but, that arrogance, meanness, and 
petty tyranny rule absolutely in many of those isolated 
little kingdoms called ships of war cannot be doubted. 

Mark Summers almost hoped, that morning, that 
somebody would insult him, so that he could resent it. 



1200 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

and be dismissed from the service, and, consequently, be 
at liberty to stop at Madeira as long as he pleased ; and 
the rest he would leave to fate. He could not freeze or 
starve in that island of profusion and warmth. And- 
something might happen ! Thus foolish was he, in the 
first wildness of his passion ; and thus foolish has many a 
sensible man been under the influence of the same 
bewitching dream. But no one insulted him ; and he 
insulted no one. The day was so beautiful, and the stop- 
ping in port so delightful to all, that no one felt dis- 
posed to quarrel. On the contrary, he was politely 
invited by the first lieutenant to join a party who were 
going to call upon an American friend of his, residing at 
Funchal ; and they spent a pleasant morning at his 
house, the pleasure being enhanced by an invitation to 
all to return in the evening, and meet some of the 
society of the town. A brilliant gathering was antici- 
pated by the officers, who were in high spirits in anticipa- 
tion of the event ; and no heart beat so quickly at the 
prospect as did that of the 2d Assistant Engineer. 
Isabel Berthiers would be there ; at least, he hoped she 
would. 

Evening came ; and Mark mingled with the festive 
throng, distinguished above all his companions by the 
beauty of his form and face, in which mental and phy- 
sical strength were conspicuous. His restless eye could 
nowhere discern the sole object for which it looked with 
any interest. She came at last, rather late, entering the 
rooms upon her father's arm. She appeared very differ- 



A MULE-RIDE IN MADEIRA. 2P1 

ently from yesterday with its jewelled state, being very 
simply attired in a white muslin dress, with flowers for 
her sole ornaments, save a single bracelet of pearls, and 
a chain of the same pure gems about her neck. She, 
too, was looking for some one ; and when she met 
Mark's kindling glance, she blushed and smiled. This 
was enough to make him radiant. They were intro- 
duced ; and he danced with her ; he even walked upon 
the portico with her, her hand resting upon his arm. Her 
words and manners were as lovely and intelligent as her 
looks. He was like one caught up in a cloud of glory, 
until she was gone. Then the festivity had no longer 
any meaning for him. It was midnight in his heart, as 
well as out of doors ; but the midnight of the first was 
not sown so quickly with stars. " Only four days 
more !" he sighed, as he came upon deck the succeed- 
ing day. In his visit to the shore that day, he had 
but one purpose, which was to walk out past the 
suburbs of Funchal, in the hope of seeing Isabel Ber- 
thiers walking in her garden, or sitting upon the 
veranda of her house. Stealing away from his com- 
panions, he took his solitary promenade ; but, slowly as 
he passed the castle, he caught not even the faintest 
glimpse of a white dress or female form. Twice and 
thrice he passed and repassed ; until, at length, tho- 
roughly discomfited, he hailed a man who was going by 
with a couple of mules, and hired one of them for a 
lonely ride among the mountains, where he might 
indulge his reveries and his disappointment undisturbed. 



202 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

Following the winding and picturesque ascent, not 
even the desperate state of his mind could blind his 
beauty-loving eyes to the magnificence of the views, 
opening, like glimpses of heaven, all about him. The 
dark blue sea glittering far below, the green heights ris- 
ing one above another, the glimpses of valleys and vine- 
yards, were enchanting. Suddenly, his heart gave a 
great bound. In the road before him were a couple of 
horsewomen. Could he be mistaken in thinking one of 
them to be Isabel Berthiers, and the other oier maid ? 
Ah, he knew that light figure and those dark brown 
curls, even in the new disguise of riding-habit and hat! 
How gracefully she sat upon her fiery and yet obedient 
Arabian, whose lithe, elastic tread seemed fittingly to 
bear onwards her perfect form ! The two were not far 
in advance of him, and were nearly pausing upon a hill- 
top, as if to enjoy the scene before them. He spurred 
up his mule to overtake them. Mules are proverbially 
obstinate ; and this particular animal was not less frac- 
tious than his race. Moreover, Mark was unaccustomed 
to their management, this being his very first trial of 
their qualities. Obedient to the touch of the spur, the 
beast started on at a reckless rate ; but, when Mark 
would have checked him with one hand, while with the 
other he raised his hat to the lady whom he now came 
opposite to, he only bounded forwards at a madder speed, 
clearing the brow of the hill with a jump which nearly 
tossed his rider from his seat. The road here was not 
much more than a steep and dangerous path ; and the 



A MULE-RIDE IN MADEIRA. 203 

mule tore down it distractedly, stumbling over rocks and 
down abrupt declivities in such style, that Mark could 
only cling to his mane with both hands. His keenest 
consciousness was of the ludicrous figure he must be 
presenting to the " sweetest eyes t'were ever seen ; ,; and 
the next moment this consciousness had passed into 
insensibility. He lay across a sharp rock with a broken 
leg. 

The shriek of terror which burst from the lips of 
Isabel Berthiers would have been music in his ears ; but 
he did not hear it. When he came to himself, with a 
groan of pain, which he would have repressed had he 
been sensible of it in time, a pitying face was bending 
over him, a soft hand was bathing his brow with water. 
But it was only Florette, the waiting-maid, after all ; 
for the nervous little French woman was unequal to an 
emergency, and had preferred remaining to keep watch 
over him ; while her more courageous mistress rode off 
in search of help. Once, moved by compassion for his 
sufferings, Florette kissed his white cheeks, as he lay 
with closed eyes striving to repress any manifestation of 
pain. The face of the young engineer flushed with anger 
at the liberty. There was only one pair of lips in the 
world which could soothe his anguish ; and, if those were 
denied him, none other must take their place. 

" How is he, Florette? Oh, tell me that he is not 
dead !" cried a voice whose sweetness had never been so 
divine as now, when full of the tenderness of pity, if 
not of deeper emotion. 



204 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

"Not dead, I hope, nor even dangerous," replied 
poor Mark, himself, forcing a smile, as Isabel slid from 
her saddle, and knelt by his side. Her hand for an 
instant rested upon his. 

"I met some men," she said. " They will be here 
very soon. They were on foot, and could not come so 
soon as 1." 

" My leg, I believe, is broken," murmured Mark. 

"Alas! how will you ever bear the rude jolting of 
being conveyed down the mountain ? Poor child !" 

Her simple expression of "poor child " betrayed the 
gentleness of her sympathy for him ; and Mark was 
almost content. " At least, I am not entirely ridiculous 
in her view," he thought. 



CHAPTER III. 

" That blessed mule I" said Mark. " How can I ever 
be sufficiently grateful to him ?" 

Isabel blushed, and plucked a violet from her 
mother's grave, by the side of which they were sitting. 
The flush on the young man's cheek, the eager light in 
his eye, deepened, as he read the sweet meaning in that 
innocent face. " A broken limb is not too dear a price 
to pay for six months in this earthly Eden," he con- 
tinued, " even if it leaves me with a limp for life ; but 
that I do not anticipate. Five of the six months of 



A MULE-RIDE IN MADEIRA. 205 

absence granted me by my ship have already fled. In 
four weeks, the ' America ' will be in port again ; the 
round of my duties will recommence — duties which you, 
the child of poetry and luxury, can hardly conceive as 
consistent with a nature which claims kindred with 
beauty and delicacy by right of an earnest love for them. 
You were never down amid the oil, and smoke, and fire, 
and suffocating atmosphere of an engine-room ; were 
you ? You never listened to the monotonous music of 
creaking machinery. You have only heard the voice of 
nightingales, the melody of your guitar, and breathed 
the aroma of flowers. You have never even been 
chilled by the rigors of winter, for there is no winter in 
this glorious climate. Is it not strange, then, that I, the 
embodiment of the real, the practical, of the energy 
which must win its own way, conquer its own fortune, 
make a new path in a new world, should have dared — 
as I have done — to worship the embodiment of the ideal, 
the poetic, the beautiful ? that I should have dared — to 
— to — dear Isabel!' 7 

The conclusion of his speech was not just what he 
intended ; but it had an eloquence of its own, given by 
the impassioned tone and look. As he spake it, it 
meant everything — hope, fear, persuasion, intense solici- 
tude, and regret, and, most of all, overmastering love. 
The fingers which were plucking the violet to pieces 
trembled. He caught them in his own, and kissed them. 
" Oh, forgive me !" he exclaimed. " What right have I, 
a poor engineer, to love you thus ? I have no right — at 



206 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

least, I know this is what your father and the world will 
think and say ; and I meant to have kept my secret in 
my own heart. I should not have trusted myself in 
your presence, had I not hoped not to betray myself. I 
have no right to be speaking to you thus ; and yet it is 
because a spiritual instinct teaches me that no one can 
appreciate what is most beautiful in your mind, and 
soul, and heart as well as your features, any more 
deeply and purely than I, that I do not feel abased by 
this confession — -that I do not feel that I wrong your 
pride in making it. You will refuse my worship. I 
expect as much, because fate has thrown me in a differ- 
ent sphere ; but there is so much of honor and reverence 
in the love I give you, that it must glorify your woman- 
hood, as proof of your own excellence. You are not 
offended with me for saying this much, when I tell you 
that I ask and expect nothing ?" 

Isabel looked up into the manly countenance, now 
all luminous and earnest with the glow of the soul 
within, and her blue eyes flashed through their tears. 
" I am honored by your love," she said ; "and I shall 
not reject it. Why should I throw away my happiness ? 
You know that I love you, dear Mark." 

Then the roseate hue deepened over all her beautiful 
face and neck at the boldness of her frank confession. 
She threw away the violets in confusion, and tried to con- 
ceal her love-lit face by hiding it in her hands. All the 
resolution of Mark^s nature was not sufficient to enable 
him to resist the temptation ; so he drew away the 



A MULE-RIDE IN MADEIRA. 207 

hands, and concealed the lovely countenance upon his 
own shoulder. "But your father ?" he asked, after a 
moment. 

Isabel lifted her head ; and the tears of joy in her 
eyes changed to tears of sorrow as they dropped upon 
her cheeks. 

11 He likes you ; he respects you ; but he will be 
angry at this." 

11 There he is, now, walking upon the veranda, alone. 
There will be no better time to speak with him. Since 
I have been so unwise, so selfish, I must confess my 
fault to him, that he may not say I have sought secretly 
to influence you." 

" It will be the end of our happiness," sighed Isabel. 

"But is it not my duty?" 

M Yes, it is ; and you must go," she answered, lifting 
her young face with a brave smile. "Go, dear Mark ; 
and good bye." 

She spoke this farewell as if she felt it to be the last. 

He hastened through the garden paths, now all in a 
glow of splendor from the light of the setting sun. Mr. 
Berthiers saw him advance, and paused in his prome- 
nade. There was a shadow upon his face, in place of the 
pleasant smile with which he usually greeted the young 
engineer, whose society he had found very attractive, 
and whose original ideas about persons and things, as 
well as the many evidences he gave of a fine and high 
order of genius, had interested him much. Perhaps the 
thought had just struck him of the danger he waa 



208 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

encountering in giving so much encouragement to this 
young man to visit at his house. An instinct may have 
warned him of the truth, or he may have read it in the 
expressive countenance before him. 

" Mr. Berthiers," began Mark, after a moment of 
embarrassing constraint, with a slight falter in his voice, 
although his glance was firm, " I love your daughter. I 
did not mean to betray this to her or you ; but, having 
unguardedly confessed it to Isabel, I cannot withhold it 
from you. I have asked no promise of her. It is to 
you that I come to ask permission to address her." 

" Who are you that tell me this?" asked Mr. 
Berthiers, all the haughtiness of his English soul 
depicted in his face. There was a sneer in the ques- 
tion which sent the hot blood of the young man burning 
through his veins. 

11 1 thought you knew who I was, Mr. Berthiers, when 
you admitted me to the hospitality of your house. You 
have the pledge of the stainlessness of my character in 
the word of the officers of my ship. I am Mark Sum- 
mers, an American, at present second assistant Engineer 
on the United States steamer ' America.' I am more 
than that, Mr. Berthiers ; I am one who depends for his 
wealth and advancement upon the energies of his own 
brain, and even hands — who hopes to make himself 
honored, independent of the aid of ancestry and inher- 
ited wealth." 

" So I supposed," replied his companion, resuming 
his courtesy of manner ; " and you must admit that 



A MULE-RIDE IN MADEIRA. 209 

these circumstances do not render you a suitable hus- 
band for my child. I respect your worth and admire 
your talent. But Isabel is very dear to me ; and I 
cannot think that her welfare would be secured by a 
union with poverty and toil. You must confess your- 
self, Mr. Summers, that it would be selfish of you to 
ask it." 

" 1 do not ask it," was the proud and hasty reply. 
"I do not expect always to be poor; and I would 
rather die than see your beloved daughter suffer a pri- 
vation of comfort or position. I was only about to re- 
quest that you would not refuse me the chance of 
gaining her hand when I have made myself worthy of its 
bestowal. She loves me, Mr. Berthiers," he added, 
with sudden vehemence. 

"I do not doubt the foolish child thinks so," was 
the cool and half angry reply. " But girls outgrow 
these first fancies. I will take the responsibility of her 
forgetting you when once you are away from Madeira." 

"And blight all the beauty of her nature by wed- 
ding her to some fool who trails a pedigree behind him," 
burst forth Mark, turning upon his heel. 

With rapid steps, he retraced his way to Isabel. 
"It is as we expected," he said, as he stopped before her 
an instant. " Your father insults me by his manner. 
If you were not his only child, I should be tempted — 
but I will not rob him of his treasure ; and I am too 
poor to secure to you the luxuries which ought to 
be yours. So farewell, Isabel. But let me ask of you 

14 



210 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

this one boon — not to forget me — not to give yourself 
to another, until I have had time to try my fate at 
the wheel of fortune. I may conquer these difficulties, 
and return in triumph to claim what has been refused 
me." 

Once again he kissed her cold hands, and was gone. 

It was long after nightfall before Isabel returned 
to the house. As she stepped into the hall, she met 
her father, who was coming to look for her. " My 
dear child," he whispered, taking her tenderly in his 
arms, and kissing her, "you look pale. You have stayed 
out in the evening air too long." 

" Oh, my father ! can you indeed love me so much, 
and yet be so cruel ?" thought the young girl, as 
she returned his embrace, and then hastened to her 
room. 

It was scarcely a week after this that, sitting on her 
balcony, she saw the flag of the " America " again flying 
as she came into port. She had come even sooner than 
had been expected. For a couple of days the stars 
and stripes fluttered over the vessel as she lay at 
anchor ; and then, one morning, when Isabel arose and 
looked out — she was gone — the " America " was not in 
sight. From that time, Isabel's old love for sitting in 
her west window, and looking forth over the sea, was 
confirmed. Late at night she sat there, and through 
long hours of the day ; until her father became seriously 
alarmed to find that no gaiety he could invent could 
win her from the charm of her solitary musings. 



A MULE-RIDE IN MADEIRA. 211 

So months and months slipped away ; and the aspect 
of things was not changed, except that the beauty of 
Isabel grew more and more into repute, and the ardor 
of her lovers seemed increased by the reserve which 
invested her loveliness with a deeper fascination. Her 
father could detect no reason for uneasiness with 
regard to her health, for, though quiet, and devoted 
to her books and reveries, and indifferent to society, 
she seemed well and not absolutely melancholy. A 
vague hope and trust it was which kept the rose still 
fresh upon her cheek — a trust that her lover would meet 
with the success he merited, and return in time to praise 
her and reward her for her constancy. 

One morning, more than a year after the departure 
of the " America," Mr. Berthiers and his daughter were 
walking in the garden together. It was the season 
when the roses were in their rarest and richest pro- 
fusion. A high wall, which protected the garden from 
the spray of the sea, was literally draped as with a 
crimson curtain. The ripples, which whispered upon 
the other side, seemed begging a share of their sweets. 

" Isabel," began her father, as they paced along 
arm-in-arm, " this is a beautiful island ; the rest of the 
world is not like it. Neither pestilence nor sterility 
destroys it ; it is spared the variations of climate which 
make a residence in most other lands less desirable ; it has 
not the savage rudeness of the north, nor the poisonous 
fevers, reptiles, and pests of the south ; it is all fertility, 
beauty — an earthly Eden. You have been brought up 



212 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

here ; and I know that you would not be happy else- 
where. I do not like to see you live quiet and self- 
secluded, even sad. I have never spoken to you of 
Mark Summers, because I believed you would soon 
forget him. He cannot make you happy, for he has not 
the means. Last night I received a proposal for your 
hand which pleased me, and I promised to make it 
known to you. Our neighbor, Don Martino — he is 
young and handsome ; his estate joins mine ; I should 
not be separated from you. He is chivalrous and ac- 
complished, a man of pure habits — all that a young girl 
usually admires. It will be a sad day for me when you 
marry any one ; but since such is the proper and natu- 
ral event some time to be anticipated, I have favored his 
proposals. " 

"Dear papa, v^hy not allow me always to live 
with you, and not talk of marriage ? I cannot accept 
Don Martino," cried Isabel, bursting into tears. 

"I know why you say this. It is that insolent 
American." 

" Mark Summers was not insolent, father. He was 
as chivalrous, as honorable as this Portuguese Don ; 
as young, as good, and a thousand times more agreeable 
to me. He had some soul, some heart, some origi- 
nality ; he had qualities to awaken enthusiasm and 
devotion. You knew it, father ; but you would not 
tolerate him, because he was self-made, and dependent 
upon his own resources. I admired the very thing you 
condemned. I believe the free air of this beloved 



A MULE-RIDE IN MADEIRA. 213 

island, the grandeur of this restless ocean, the books, 
the poetry you have given me to read, the thousand 
happy influences which here surround me, have made 
me a staunch republican, papa. I love the earth for its 
beauty, and men for what they are, not for the circum- 
stances which they have had no hand in creating. Is it 
the work of true nobility, my father, to trample upon a 
glorious manhood, because it does not come recom- 
mended by outward pomp ?" 

She paused and dropped his arm, looking with her 
clear eyes into his face until he blushed beneath their 
earnest questioning. 

11 What do you know of the world, little girl?" he 
answered. 

They were standing now by her mother's grave, 
the very spot where Mark had confessed his passion, 
the spot which through life had ever been sacred and 
sweet to her. 

" You loved my mother, did you not ? And she 
loved you ? Even so do I and Mark love each other." 

It was seldom she had ventured to breathe her 
mother's name to him. Now he looked down, pale 
and troubled, upon the blossom-covered mound at his 
feet. 

" G-od knows I loved her, and that I have never 
ceased to mourn her — that I have been faithful to her 
memory !" 

" Yet you would preach that love is a mockery, and 
that position is the only tangible good. Well, my 



214 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

father, when you think of the happy days you passed 
with my mother, remember that you have deprived two 
young hearts of all that coveted happiness." 

He looked into her face with a new expression ; 
there was something in its calm dignity, its eloquent 
intensity, which awakened new reflections. 

" I never thought of it in that light before," he said 
at length, after a long silence. " You may be right, 
Isabel, and I may be wrong. You shall have your own 
way, child. I am sure it will be one which will not 
grieve the angel watch which, I believe, your mother 
keeps over you." 

" She blesses you for this, I know," cried Isabel, in 
a transport of joy. " My own noble father !" 

Her arms were about his neck, and as they sat by 
the grave together, both in tears, a little bird in the 
orange tree over head poured forth a flood of triumph- 
ant music, as if he knew and sympathized in the sudden 
bliss of a girlish heart. 

Strange coincidences sometimes occur. On that 
most golden, most glorious of all the days that had ever 
visited the earth to Isabel Berthiers, and wrapped her 
spirit in mysterous splendor, as she went to her room 
after her interview with her father, to dream over 
her new hope in the sweetness of solitude, something 
upon the ocean arrested her brilliant glance. She 
flew to the balcony ; and, raising the glass which lay 
there, she very plainly read, upon the familiar pennant 
which streamed from a steamer just casting anchor, the 



A MULE-RIDE IN MADEIRA. 215 

word " America." It is a wonder her heart did not 
break, it nattered so. But it did not ; it beat on and 
on, in its blissful tumult, until the evening hour, when 
she welcomed Mark Summers upon the veranda where 
she had first met him. 

A wedding in Madeira, when beauty was vowed to 
manly worth, upon a starry evening, with lights spark- 
ling like great fire-flies amid bowers of luxurious bloom, 
with sounds of mirth and festivity through all the plea- 
sant rooms of the castle, and the solemn mountains look- 
ing down approvingly upon the scene, and the ocean mur- 
muring its undertone of joy, must have had romance 
enough in it to satisfy two wild young hearts. 

The good fellows of the "America" drank spark- 
ling goblets of pure wine, as they sailed away, leaving 
their companion to his happy fate as the husband of the 
beautiful Isabel, the belle of Madeira. 

" To the memory of Mark Summers," was the 
somewhat equivocal toast which they gave, as the scarf 
of his bride waved them a farewell from the window of 
the tower. 



216 



MADAME EECAMIER. 

By fortune's favor early raised 

To a most dangerous place, 
And bountifully dowered, besides, 

With loveliness and grace : 
How didst thou triumph over all 
Who rose like thee, though but to fall ? 

For thou wert tempted like as they — 

Ay, tempted even more — 
So courted, flattered, and beloved, 

Was woman ne'er before. 
Yet strength was given thee from on high 
To keep thy youth's first purity. 

All men with true and noble souls 
Thy firmest friends became — 

While worthless suitors had thy scorn, 
And fled in guilty shame. 

Even royalty shrunk back subdued 

By thy most noble womanhood. 






11 













MADAME RECAMIER, 21 

By all life's dangers and its trials, 

So worthy wert thou proved, 
That they who only saw, admired, 

And they who knew thee, loved. 
And for such purity and worth, 
What was thy recompense on earth ? 

Alas ! while shameless infamy 

Sat in her pride of place, 
Thy goodness only brought to thee 

Downfall and sad disgrace. 
Alas ! that justice should bestow, 
So blindly, her rewards below. 

Yet who can envy those who rise 

By wrong to eminence ? 
Or who can pity thee, sustained 

By conscious innocence ? 
Who would not rather suffer long 
For right, than but one hour for wrong ? 

Who would not rather have thy thoughts 

In exile and alone, 
Than his who kept, by tyranny, 

An unsubstantial throne ? 
He scarce might number each offence — 
Thine only one was innocence. 



218 



JOSEPHINE GALLERY 



And whatsoe'er our fates may be, 

Whether we rise or fall, 
Still One who sees, not as man sees, 

Is in, and over all ; 
Bringing, by ways not understood, 
From earthly evil, heavenly good ! 



PAUL TYNVj 

ACTOR AND GENTLEMAN, 

BY T. B. ALDRICH. 



This is true, every word of it. 

One December afternoon — so long ago that I posi- 
tively refuse to give dates — I was sitting in my room, 
at a miscellaneous boarding-house, reading the proof- 
sheets of— no matter what. I was on the point of dis- 
entangling three anything but original lucid paragraphs 
which the compositor had kindly consolidated into one, 
and had arrived at that pitch of obliviousness to exter- 
nal things which only Bohemians know, when I sud- 
denly became sensible that a most extraordinary style 
of conversation was going on in the next room. It 
seemed as if four or five persons were speaking in 
regular succession, the sentences following rapidly in 
each other's wake, and exploding in the air like innu- 
merable rockets. Nothing short of this pyrotechnic simile 



219 



220 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

could describe the quick, angular sounds which shot 
through the thin partition into my room. 

" If thou be'st devil I cannot kill thee !" cried a deep 
bass voice. 

" The devil!' 7 said I, upsetting my inkstand. 

An ill-defined idea of murder floated on the surface 
of my mind, like a cork ; and, in a second, I was at my 
neighbor's door. It was locked. Ceremony might have 
suggested a tap on the panels, but impulse kicked open 
the door. 

Near the bed stood a slim, swarthy man, dressed in 
a pair of snuff-colored tights, with a sort of impromptu 
turban on his head, and a spangled mantle — 

" You all do know this mantle ' 

of seedy brown velvet, thrown tragically over his 
shoulders. In his right hand he held the hilt of a 
sword — the blade was buried in a languid-looking bolster. 
I glanced instinctively at the floor, expecting to see 
several men, women, and children in the last agonies 
of death ; but nothing was slaughtered, save the over- 
grown pillow : and no one was in the room save the 
strange man and myself. 

As he drew out the short, flat sword, which I dis- 
covered to be an ingenious arrangement of wood and 
tin-foil, his eyes glowed insanely, and one large vein 
in his forehead threatened to break out of its accus- 
tomed channel, like the Nile, and overflow his face. 






PAUL PYNE. 221 

Without noticing my noisy entrance, he addressed 
himself to the stabbed bolster : 

" I am not sorry neither ; I'd have thee live, 
For, in my sense, 'tis happiness to die." 

11 1 beg your pardon, sir," said I, touching his shoul- 
der, " you are " 

"An actor." He finished the sentence for me. 
"And I fear," he continued, "that my thoughtless 
rehearsal has disturbed you. I came here yesterday, 
as there was a sick lady on the same floor with me at 
my last lodgings, and my readings annoyed her. I 
thought I should trouble no one here ; but I might have 
known — I might have known." 

His expression was almost feminine in its gentleness; 
and, as he spoke, I saw " a misery perched i' the melan- 
choly corners of his mouth." I made haste to assure him 
that his declamation was not unpleasant to me, and to 
put in a modest excuse for my intrusion. As I turned 
to the door — having waited in vain for a recognition of 
the apology — he folded his arms, and said, in the most 
natural manner in the world : 

" Soft you, a word or two before yon go!" 

Of course, I paused. He continued : 

M I have done the state some service, and they know it." 

"Tn the police department ?" I suggested, quietly. 



222 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

The absurdity of my comment extinguished his 
dramatic fire. He turned, and held out both hands 
to me with a frankness I could not resist. There was 
that certain quiet gentility about him, which, to me, is 
always irresistible — that refinement of face and manner 
which poverty never hides, and which all the world 
could not purchase for a clown. It is born with the 
man, like the color of his eyes, like the shape of his 
finger-nails. 

This was Paul Pyne, and, as I came to know him 
afterwards, an Actor and a Gentleman. Write that 
down. 



n. 



The people of Bohemia make rapid friendships, and 
are constantly giving the lie to that line of the sweet 
song which says, 

" The poor make no new friends." 

In a week I had known Paul Pyne a year. Propin- 
quity is everything, and Pyne and I were on the same 
floor, which does not, by any means, signify that we 
were on the same footing in the world ; for Mr. Pyne 
11 did " second-rate characters at a fourth-rate theatre, 
and I was the junior editor of the " Daily Slasher." We 
met every day, on the stairs, and in the entry ; and 






PAUL PYNE. 223 

occasionally Mr. Pyne would draw a chair in front of 
my little ill-natured air-tight stove, which was always 
muttering to itself, and chat with me. Before a month 
had elapsed I found myself lying awake until he came 
home from the theatre, which was always a long while 
after midnight ; then he generally spent a chatty ten 
minutes at my bedside before retiring. Many a time, 
after my light was put out, I used to fancy that I saw 
his thoughtful, care-worn face outlined on the dark, and 
that sad, sweet smile of his which seemed to say, " Never 
mind me, but God bless you !" 

As I have said, Paul Pyne played inferior parts at au 
obscure theatre ; and yet he had in him the making of 
a great actor. Indeed, he had been quite famous once ; 
but that was in years past, before he knew what it was 
to be tired of life. 

For Paul Pyne was a melancholy man. I learnt 
that in three days. He had thrown away ambition long 
and long ago : he bided his time in the busy world, 
among men but not of them ; and you saw it written in 
his eyes — Tired of life ! 

At first his want of ambition was a mystery to me ; 
but day by day, as his past history leaked out in epi- 
sodes, I saw how poor a man was Hamlet. As the 
worldly reader has already surmised, there was a woman 
at the bottom of it. 

There is a woman at the bottom of everything. 

One night, some ten years since, the habitn&s of the 
old Park — the critical and the non-critical, the members 



224 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

of the orchestra, the call-boys, the scene-shifters, and all 
the supernumeraries of the theatre — were thrown into 
a state of melo-dramatic excitement by the debut of the 
petite and angelic Miss Flighty. She was distracting. 
It seemed as if nature, in shaping her, had taken the 
coquettishness out of twenty coquetish women, and 
placed the whole in Miss Flighty's snowy little bosom 
In short — to use an Arabian expression — she was a 
temptation to the sons of men, and particularly to the 
only son of Paul's father. 

In due course of time, bouquets, bracelets, pink 
notes, and (among other things) Paul Pyne, fell at Miss 
Flighty's very pretty feet. Whether it was in conse- 
quence of his handsome eyes, or his cavalier-like bearing 
(for Paul was a gentleman), I cannot say ; but Miss 
Flighty gave him her hand to kiss — and he kissed it 
quite naturally. He lived in the atmosphere of Miss 
Flighty's lips, to which the Orient is nothing, and life 
was couleur de rose. 

The days went by, as they will in such cases ; and 
Paul was doing as well as could be expected — with such 
a naughty little woman for a wife. 

But there came a time when his bouquets were no 
longer accepted, when her cool " Good morning, sir," 
took the warm place of " Paul, my pet, how are you ?" 
and an icy formality grew up around her like the Great 
Wall of China, shutting Paul out in the cold. 

Life has its "situations" like any other comedy. 
The denotement of Paul's little play came suddenly. 



PAUL PYNE. 225 

One night the call-boy popped his head into the 
green-room — that mysterious place where (as in the 
grave) kings lose their dignity, and clowns forget their 
wit — and shrieked for " Juliet,' 7 in vain. Then he ham- 
mered industriously at the young lady's dressing-room 
door. But the fair capulet was not to be found ; nor 
was he of the house of Montague anywhere visible. 
The fact is, the Romeo and Juliet of the evening were 
on their way to a neighboring city. 

It is difficult to play " Romeo and Juliet" without 
Juliet and Romeo. The audience was uproarious, of 
course. Two farces supplanted the tragedy ; and Paul 
Pyne, that night, walked through a light-hearted comedy 
with tragic awfulness. 

But he was Paul Pyne no more. 

I would that I could have known him in his sunny 
days. To me he was always a poor player, trailing his 
life among the smoky- gas-lights and faded scenery of an 
out-of-the-way theatre. Nothing more. Stop ! he was 
something more. He was courteous and kind, chival- 
rous and true, wearing his heart upon his sleeve, like 
any gentleman in Christendom ! 



in. 



As Paul Pyne came into my room abruptly, one 
morning, I thrust a paper, which I had been reading, 

15 



226 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

into my bosom. It was skillfully done : but nothing 
escaped Paul. 

" Why do you hide your paper?" he said. " Does 
the critic snarl at your book T He is wrong. Does he 
praise it ? You are modest. Or — or is it about her ?" 

" About her, Paul ; but do not read it." 

11 Give me the paper ?" 

As the Gazette slipped from his stiffened fingers, I 
think I never saw any one so pale as Paul was. 

For his sake and her sake, I will not tell the life 
that Therese Pyne lived nor the death she died. Nor 
will I say how far Paul Pyne was wrong. 

" Gently scan your brother man- 
Still gentler sister woman." 

"Paul," said I, "you are sick." 

11 The whole world is sick — a piece of it dies every 
day." 

That was a week after the newspaper affair, and he 
was sitting on his bed. 

" When I leave this room," said Pyne, "two men 
will help me — one at my head and the other at my 
heels !" 

When I forget the smile that accompanied these 
words, I shall have forgotten the saddest sight of 
my life. 

The doctor said not, but Paul's days were numbered. 
I watched every night at his bedside. It was pitiful to 
hear him, in his feverish sleep, repeat the fag-ends of 



PAUL PYNE. 227 

terrible soliloques — now a passage from Macbeth, now a 
curse from Lear, or a ghastly mixing up of lines from 
Othello and the Comedy of Errors. " Poor Tom's 
a-cold," he would say ; and then abruptly : 

" Oome and kiss me, sweet-and-twenty, 
Youth's a stuff will not endure 1" 

Then, stretching out his hands, " Alas, poor ghost!" 

It must have been near twelve o'clock one night, 
that I saw, or thought I saw him, leave the bed, and 
open a small trunk in which he kept his scant wardrobe. 
He seemed to be dressing himself — but for what charac- 
ter I could not determine. As he turned over the vari- 
ous articles of theatrical finery, he had a line for each, 
as if some old memory spoke, and not Paul Pyne ! 
Having finished his "make up,' 7 which resembled no- 
thing I ever saw on or off the stage, he seemed to melt 
away, like the misty people who come to us in dreams. 

The fine October sunshine on my eyelids awakened 
me. 

Paul was lying across the bed most grotesquely ap- 
parelled. On his head was a Grecian helmet, on his feet 
a pair of modern riding-boots ; his face was half hidden 
by a long white beard such as Shylock wears ; a blue 
doublet, and a maroon-colored cloak, completed the 
strange costume. On this motley, insane dress fell the 
morning sunlight, leaping from spangle to spangle. I 
grasped Paul's hand. 

It was very cold ! 



PAULINE BONAPARTE. 

Let her name be Queen of Beauty 
For her wondrous loveliness ; 

She is worthy of no higher 
And no better place than this. 

Not as daughter or as sister, 
Was she aught we can desire ; 

Not as friend, or wife, or mother, 
Can we honor or admire. 

And we scarce dare even whisper, 
As we pause and read her name 
" She had something to redeem her, 
We can pity while we blame. " 

For no wisdom came with knowledge 
To retrieve a wasted past ; 

Hers was Folly's life of folly, 
And its crowning act the last. 

Think of an immortal creature 
With a soul for endless years, 

Knowing only selfish pleasures, 
Weeping only selfish tears 



88 



SpiKlSS 



m 












BOM .v 1BTE, 



■ i . 



PAULINE BONAPARTE. 229 

Think of any woman, troubled 
By no higher thought than this — 

Whether emeralds, pearls, or diamonds 
Best would grace her loveliness ; — 

Taxing all the little powers 

Of a vain and foolish brain 
With the fashion of a turban, 

Or the border of a train ! 

Yet our Queen of Beauty's vision 

Of the fullness of delight 
Was a ' ' fete for every morning, 

And a ball for every night j" 

And to live for pleasure only, 

In a ceaseless round of mirth ; 
This, her estimate of duty, 

And her value of life's worth. 

So we call her Queen of Beauty, 

Yielding to her only claim ; 
For no deed that honors woman 

Ever beautified her name. 

All her days were vain and idle, 

As a vapor or a breath ; 
She was fair, but frail and sinful, 

In her life and in her death. 



CAROLINE BONAPARTE. 

From the humblest little blossom 
To the flowers of tropic climes, 

All things God has made are lovely, 
In their seasons and their times. 

From the farthest star that twinkles, 
To the sun with dazzling light, 

Every planet is most glorious 
In his own appointed height. 

And the oak tree is no better, 
Towering in majestic pride, 

Than the clinging vine, whose verdure 
Covers all his rugged side. 

And the nightingale's soft music 
Falls no sweeter through the dark, 

Than the clear and ringing matin 
Of the heaven-ascending lark. 

Nature always owns God's wisdom ; 

Flower, and bird, and star, and sun, 
Keep wherever he has placed them, 

Growing, singing, shining on. 



CAROLINE BONAPARTE. 231 

When the birds of morn are chanting, 

Then the nightingale doth rest ; 
Never any lark soars, singing, 

When she should be in her nest. 

And each little star rejoices 

In his empire of a night, 
As the sun doth, in the slendor 

Of his own unrivalled light. 

Only man, of all creation, 

His true limit doth o'erleap : 
Only man falls down, by climbing 

Up to heights he cannot keep. 

Yet thy rise and fall, fair lady, 
Makes at least this lesson plain : 

Haughty pride and usurpation 
Cannot keep what they can gain. 

Thou hadst never suffered downfall, 

And disgrace and banishment ; 
If, in thine own humble station, 

Thou hadst learned to be content. 

Hadst thou kept thy feet from places, 
Where but lawful queens had trod, 
Claiming this one title only, 
11 Woman, by the grace of God." 



LOST ALICE. 



CHAPTEE I. 



Why did I marry her ? I often asked myself the 
question, in the days that succeeded our honeymoon. 
By right, I should have married no one. Yet I loved 
her, as I love her still. 

She was, perhaps, the strangest character of her age. 
In her girlhood, I could not comprehend her ; and I 
often think, when I raise my eyes to her grave, quiet 
face, as she sits opposite me at dinner, that I do not 
comprehend her yet. There are many thoughts work- 
ing in her brain of which I know nothing, and flashes 
of feeling look out at her eyes now and then, and go 
back again, as captives might steal a glimpse at the 
outer world through their prison bars, and turn to 
their brick- walled solitude once more. She is my wife. 
I have her, and hold her as no other can. She bears 
my name, and sits at the head of my table ; she rides 
beside me in my carriage, or takes my arm as we 
walk : and yet I know and feel, all the time, that 
the darling of my past has fled from me forever, and 



LOST ALICE. 233 

that it is only the ghost of the gay Alice, whom I won 
in all the bloom of her bright youth, that lingers near 
me now. 

She was not a child when I married her, though she 
was very young. I mean, that life had taught her lessons 
which are generally given only to the grey-haired, and 
had laid burdens upon her which belong of right to 
the old. She had been an unloved child, and at the 
age of sixteen she was left to herself, and entirely 
dependent on her own exertions. Friends and family 
she had none, so she was accustomed laughingly to say ; 
but I have since found that her sisters were living, 
and in happy homes, even at the time when she 
accepted that awful trust of herself and went out of 
the great world to fulfill it. Of this part of her life 
she never speaks ; but one who knew her then has told 
me much. It was a- time of struggle and pain, as well 
it might have been. Fresh from the life of a lara;e 
boarding-school, she was little fitted for the bustle of a 
great selfish city ; and the tears come to my eyes as I 
think, with a kind of wonder, on the child who pushed 
her way through difficulties at which strong men have 
quailed, and made herself a name, and a position, and a 
home. She was a writer — at first a drudge, for the 
weekly press, poorly paid, and unappreciated. By 
and by, brighter days dawned, and the wolf went away 
from the door. She was admired, read, sought after, 
and — above all — paid. Even then, she could not use 
the wisdom she had purchased at so dear a rate. She 



234 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

held her heart in her hand, and it was wrung and tor- 
tured every day 

11 1 may as well stop breathing as stop loving/' 7 she 
would say, with a happy smile. " Don't talk to me 
about my folly. Let me go on with my toys ; and, 
if they break in my hand you cannot help it, and I shall 
not come to you for sympathy." 

She was not beautiful ; but something — whether it 
was her bright, happy face, or the restless gaiety of her 
manner — bewitched people, and made them like her. 
Men did the maddest things imaginable for her sake ; 
and not only young men in whom folly was pardonable, 
but those who should have been too wise to be caught 
by the sparkle of her smile, or the gay ringing of her 
laugh. She did not trust them ; her early life had 
taught her better ; but I think she liked them for a 
while, till some newer fancy came, and then she danced 
past them, and was gone. 

It was in the country that I met her first ; and there 
she was more herself than in the city. We were dis- 
tant relatives, though we had never seen each other, and 
the Fates sent me to spend my summer vacation with 
my mother's aunt, in a country village, where she was 
already domesticated. Had I known this, 1 should have 
kept my distance ; for it was only a fourteenth or 
fifteenth cousinship that lay between us, and I had 
a kind of horror of her. I hardly knew why. I was a 
steady-going, quiet sort of lawyer, and hated to have 
my short holiday of rest and quiet broken in upon by a 



LOST ALICE. 235 

fine lady. I said as much to my aunt in return for her 
announcement of " Alice Kent is here," with which 
she greeted me. She looked over her spectacles in 
quiet wonder as I gave her a slight sketch of the 
lady's city life, as I had had it from the lips of "Mrs. 
Grundy " herself. 

" Well — live and learn, they say. But whoever 
would think it was our Alice you are talking of, Frank ! 
However, I '11 say no more about her. You '11 have 
plenty of time to get acquainted with her in the month 
you mean to pass here. And we are glad to see you, 
and your bedroom is ready, the one you used to like." 

I took up my hat, and strolled away to have a look at 
the farm. I walked slowly through the woods, with. the 
sunshine falling through the green leaves of the young 
beeches in checkered radiance on my path. Something 
stirred as I pierced my way through the branches, and I 
heard a low growl. 

A girl was half-sitting, half- lying, in the sunshine 
beside the little lake, throwing pebbles into the water, 
and watching the ripples that spread and widened to the 
other shore. A great black Newfoundland dog was 
standing between me and her, showing a formidable 
row of strong white teeth, and looking me threateningly 
in the face. 

She started, and looked sharply round, and saw me 
standing in the little grove with the dog between us. 
She burst out laughing. 

I felt that I was cutting a rather ridiculous figure, 



236 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

but I put a bold face upon the matter, and asked, 
coolly — 

" Are you Alice Kent V 

" People call me so." 

"Then I suppose I may call you cousin, for I am 
Frank Atherton ?" 

" Cousin Frank ! We have been expecting you this 
week. When did you come V 

" Just now." 

She made room for me beside her. .We talked long, 
about our family, our mutual friends, and the old home- 
stead of the Athertons. She was dressed plainly, very 
plainly, in a kind of grey material, that fell around her 
in light, soft folds. Her brown hair was soft and pretty, 
but she wore it carelessly pushed away from her fore- 
head : not arranged with that nicety I should have ex- 
pected of a city belle. Her features were irregular, full 
of life and spirit, but decidedly plain ; her complexion 
fair, her mouth rather large, frank, and smiling ; her 
eyebrows arched, as if they were asking questions ; and 
her eyes large, and of a soft dark grey, very pleasant to 
look into, very puzzling, too, as I found afterwards to 
my cost. Those eyes were the only beauty she possessed, 
and she unconsciously made the most of them. 

Though I had known her only five minutes, I felt 
this, when I chanced to look up and meet a curious 
glance she had fixed on me. She had ceased to talk, 
and was sitting, with her lips half apart and a lovely 
color mantling on her cheek, studying my face intentlv. 



LOST ALICE. 237 

when our eyes met. There was an electric kind of 
shock in the gaze. I saw the color deepen and go up to 
her forehead, and a shiver ran over me from head to 
foot. It was dangerous for me to watch that blush, but 
I did ; and I longed to know its cause, and wondered 
what thought had brought it. 

"Fred, bring me my hat," she said to her dog, 
affecting to yawn. "It is time for us to go home to 
supper, I suppose. Are you hungry, Cousin Frank ?" 

"Yes — no," I answered, with my thoughts still run- 
ning on that blush. 

She laughed good-naturedly, and took the hat from 
the Newfoundland, who had brought it in his mouth. 

" How fond you are of that great dog !" I said, as 
we rose from our seat beneath the tree. 

" Fond of him V J She stooped down over him with a 
sudden impetuous movement, took his head between her 
two hands, and kissed the beauty-spot on his forehead. 
" Fond of him, Cousin Frank? Why, the dog is my 
idol ! He is the only thing on earth who is or has been 

true to me, and the only thing " She stopped short, 

and colored. 

" That you have been true to," I said, finishing the 
sentence for her. 

" So people say," she answered, with a laugh, " But 
look at him — look at those beautiful eyes, and tell me if 
any one could help loving him. My poor old Fred ! 
So honest in this weary world !" 

She sighed, and patted his head again, and he stood 



238 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

wagging his tail and looking up into her face, with eyes 
that were, as she had said, beautiful, and what was bet- 
ter far, brimful of love and honesty. 

" I doubt if you will keep pace with us," she said, 
after we had walked a few steps ; " and Fred is longing 
for a race ; I always give him one through the woods. 
Would you mind ?" 

"Oh dear, no!" 

The next moment she was off like the wind, and the 
dog tearing after her, barking till the woods rang again. 
I saw her that night no more. 



CHAPTEE II. 

I was, as I have already said, a grave, steady-going 
lawyer, verging towards a respectable middle age, with 
one or two grey hairs showing among my black locks. 
I had had my dreams and fancies, and my hot, eager, 
generous youth, like most other men ; and they had 
passed away. But one thing I had not known, one 
thing I had missed (save in my dreams), and that was a 
woman's love. 

So, as a matter of course, I fell into danger now. 
When Alice Kent went singing and dancing through the 
house, leaving every door and window open as she went, 
I used often to lay down my pen and look after her, and 
feel as if the sun shone brighter for her being there. 



LOST ALICE. 239 

We grew to be great friends — like brother and sister, 
I used to say to myself. How that liking glided 
gradually into loving, I could not have told. I met her 
one day in the village street. I turned a corner, and 
came upon her suddenly. She was walking slowly 
along, with her dog beside her, and her eyes fixed upon 
the ground, looking graver and more thoughtful than I 
had ever seen her before. At sight of me her whole 
face brightened suddenly ; yet she passed me with a 
slight nod and a smile, and took her way towards home. 
Seeing that flash of light play over her grave face, and 
feeling the sudden bound with which my heart sprang 
up to meet it, I knew what we were to each other. 

It was late when I reached home, after a musing 
walk. The farmer and his wife had gone to bed, the 
children were at a merry-making at the next house, and 
a solitary light burned from the parlor window, which 
was open. The full moon shone fairly in a sky without 
a cloud. I unfastened the gate, and went in ; and there 
in the open door sat Alice, with a light shawl thrown 
over her shoulders, her head resting on the shaggy coat 
of the Newfoundland dog. His beautiful brown eyes 
watched me as I came up the path, but he did not stir. 

I sat down near her ; but on the lower step, so that 
I could look up in her face. 

" Alice, you do not look well." 

" But I am. Quite well. I am going away to-morrow.*' 

II Going away ! Where ?" 

"Home. To London. Well? What ails you, 



240 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

Cousin Frank ? Did you never hear of any one who 
went to London before f" 

" Yes ; but why do you go V 9 

"Why?" She opened her eyes and looked at me. 
14 For many reasons. Firstly, I only came for six weeks, 
and I have stayed nearly three months ; secondly, because 
I have business which can be put off no longer ; and, 
thirdly, because my friends are wondering what on earth 
keeps me here so long (they will say soon it is you, 
Frank). They vow they cannot do without me any 
longer ; and it is pleasant to be missed, you know." 

" And so you are going back to the old life, Alice ? 
And, by and by, I suppose you will marry ?" 

I would not advise any man, be he old or young, in 
case he does not think it wise or prudent to marry the 
woman he loves, to linger with her in the door-way of a 
silent farmhouse, and hold her hand, and look out upon 
a moonlight night. The touch of the small slight fingers 
was playing the mischief with my good resolutions, and 
my wisdom (if I had any). 

" Alice," I said, softly; and I almost started, as she 
did, at the sound of my own voice, it was so changed. 
" Alice, we have been very happy here." 

" Very." 

I took both her hands, and held them close in mine. 
But she would not look at me, though her face was 
turned that way. 

" There is a great difference between us, dear Alice. 
I am much older than you, and much graver. I have 



LOST ALICE. 241 

never loved any woman but you in my life, while you 
have charmed a thousand hearts, and had a thousand 
fancies. If you were what the world thinks you, and 
what you try to make yourself out to be, I should say 
no more than this — I love you. But I know that you 
have a heart. I know that you can love, if you will ; 
and can be true if you will. And so I beseech you 
to talk to me honestly, and tell me if you can love 
me, or if you do. I am not used to asking such ques- 
tions of ladies, Alice, and I may seem rough and rude ; 
but believe me when I say you have won my whole 
heart, and I cannot be happy without you." 

"Yes, I believe you, 77 she said. 

" But do you trust me, and do you love me ? 

She might trifle with a trifler, but she was earnest 
enough with me. 

" I trust you and I love you, 77 she answered frankly. 
"Are you wondering why I can stand before you and 
speak so calmly ? Because I do not think I shall ever 
marry you. You do not love me as I have always said 
my husband should love me. I am wayward and exact- 
ing, and I should weary your life out by my constant 
craving for tenderness. I was made to be petted, 
Frank ; and you, though a loving, are not an affec- 
tionate man. You would wish me at the bottom of 
the Red Sea before we had been married a month ; 
and because you could not get me there, you would go 
to work and break my heart, by way of amusement. 
I know it as well as if I had seen it all — even now." 

16 



242 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

She looked at me, and all her woman's heart and 
nature were in her eyes. They spoke love and passion 
and deep, deep tenderness — and all for me. Something 
leaped into life in my heart at that moment which I had 
never felt before — something that made my affection of 
the last few hours seem cold and dead beside its fervent 
glow. I had her in my arms within the instant — close 
— close to my heart. 

"Alice ! if ever man loved woman with heart and 
soul — madly and unreasonably, if you will, but still 
truly and honestly— I love you, my darling." 

" But will it last ? Oh, Frank, will it last ?" 

I bent down, and our lips met in a long fond kiss. 
" You will be my wife, Alice ?" 

She leaned her pretty head against my arm, and her 
hand stole into mine again. 

II Do you mean that for your answer ? Am I to 
keep the hand, dear Alice, and call it mine ?" 

"If you will, Francis." 

It was the first time she had ever given me that 
name. But she never called me by any other again 
until she ceased to love me ; and it sounds sweetly in 
my memory now, and it will sound sweetly to my dying 
day. 



LOST ALICE. 243 



CHAPTEE III. 

We were married not long after, and for six months 
we dwelt in a " Fool's Paradise." When I think that 
but for me it might have lasted to our dying day, I can 
only sigh, and take up the burden of my life with an 
aching heart. 

They had called Alice fickle — oh, how wrongly ! 
No human being could be truer to another than she was 
to me. 

'■ I only wanted to find my master, Francis," she 
used to say, when I laughed at her about it. " I was 
looking for him through all those long years, and I 
began to think he would never come. But from the 
first moment when I heard you speak, and met your 
eyes, I felt that he was near me. And I am glad to 
wear my master's chains," she added, kissing my hand. 

And I am sure she was in earnest I pleased her best 
when I treated her most like a child. She was no angel — 
a passionate, high spirited creature. She rebelled a thou- 
sand times a day, although she delighted in my control. 
But it was pretty to see her, when she turned to leave 
the room, with fire in her eyes, and a deep flush on her 
cheek — it was pretty to see her with her hand upon the 
lock even, drop her proud head submissively, and wait 
when I said — " Stop. Shut the door, and listen to me," 



244 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

Yet it was dangerous. I, who had never been loved 
before, what could I do but become a tyrant, when a 
creature so noble as this bent down before me ? 

She loved me. Every chord of her most sensitive 
heart thrilled and trembled to my touch, and gave forth 
sweetest music j yet I was not satisfied. I tried the 
minor key. Through her deep affection for me I 
wounded her cruelly. I can see it now. Some wise 
idea found its way into my head and whispered that 1 
was making a child of my wife by my indulgent ways, 
and that her character would never develop itself in so 
much sunshine. I acted upon that thought, forgetting 
how she had already been tried in the fiery furnace of 
affliction ; and quite unconscious that while she was 
getting back all the innocent gaiety of her childish 
years, the deep lessons of her womanhood were still 
lying beneath the sparkling surface of her playful ways. 

If for a time she had charmed me out of my graver 
self, I resolved to be charmed no more. I devoted my- 
self again to my business, heart and soul, and sat poring 
for hours over law-papers without speaking to her. Yet 
she did not complain. So long as she was certain that 
I loved her, she was content, and took up her pen again, 
and went on with the work our marriage had inter- 
rupted. Her writing-desk was in my study, by a win- 
dow just opposite mine ; and sometimes I would cease 
to hear the rapid movement of her pen, and, looking 
up, I would find her eyes fixed upon my face, while a 
happy smile was playing around her lips. One day 



LOST ALICE. 245 

that glance found me in a most unreasonable mood. 
The sense of her love half pained me, and I said, curtly, 

"It is bad taste, Alice, to look at any one in that 
way." 

She dropped her pen, only too glad of an excuse to 
talk to me, and came and leaned over my chair. 

" And why ? when I love some one." 

This was a bad beginning of the lesson. I wanted to 
teach her, and I turned over my papers in silence. 

"Do I annoy you, Francis?" 

" Not much." 

Her light hand was playing with my hair, and her 
breath was warm on my cheek. I felt my wisdom van- 
ishing, and tried to make up for its loss by an increased 
coldness of manner. 

" One kiss," she said. " Just one, and I'll go away." 

" What nonsense, Alice ! "What time have I to 
think of kisses now ?" 

She stood up, and looked me in the face. 

11 Do I tease you, Francis ?" 

" Yery much." 

She gave a little sigh — so faint that I could scarcely 
hear it — and left the room. I had scared her gaiety 
away for that morning. 

This was the first cloud in our sky. 

It seems strange now, when I look back upon it 
after the lapse of years, how perseveringly I labored to 
destroy the foundation of peace and happiness on which 
I might have built my life. 



246 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

In the midst of our estrangement the dog sickened. 
There was a week of misgiving on Alice's part, when 
she sat beside him with her books, or writing all the 
time — there was a day when both books and manuscript 
were put away, and she was bending over him, with her 
tears falling fast, as she tried to husu his moans, and 
looked into his fast glazing eyes — and there was an hour 
of stillness, when she lay on the low couch, with her arm 
around his neck, neither speaking nor stirring. And 
when the poor creature's last breath was drawn, she 
bent over him with a passionate burst of grief, kissed 
the white spot upon his forehead, and closed the soft, 
dark eyes, that even in death were turned towards her 
with a loving look. 

She did not come to me for sympathy. She watched 
alone, while the gardener dug a grave and buried him 
'beneath the study window. She never mentioned him 
to me, and never paid her daily visit to his grave till I 
was busy with my papers for the evening. So the year, 
which had begun in love and happiness, came to its 
close. 

It was a warm, bright, beautiful day, and she seemed 
to bring a burst of sunlight and happiness with her as 
she opened the door. Her own face, too, was radiant, 
and she looked like the Alice of the old farm house as 
she came on tip-toe and bent over my chair. 

" Well, what is it?" I asked, looking up. 

She laid a pretty little bouquet of violets, tied with 
blue ribbons, before me. 



LOST ALICE. 247 

" I have been to the conservatory, and have brought 
you the first flowers of the season, Francis. And some- 
thing else, which, perhaps, you may not like so well." 

She bent over me as she spoke, and leaning her hand 
lightly on my shoulder, kissed me twice. She had been 
chary of her caresses, for some time ; and, when she did 
this of her own accord, I wheeled round in my chair, and 
looked up at her. 

" You seem very happy to-day, Alice ?" 

" It is somebody's birthday," she said, stationing her- 
self upon my knee, and looking into my eyes. " And I 
wish somebody very many happy returns s" — her voice 
faltered a little — u and if there has been any wrong feel- 
ing, Francis, for the last six months, we will bury it to- 
day, now and forever." 

She clung to me in silence, and hid her face upon my 
breast. I was moved, in spite of myself, and kissed the 
brown hair that was scattered over my shoulder, and said 
I was quite willing to forget everything (as if I had 
anything to forget) ! At which she looked up with a 
bright smile, and I dare say thought me very magnani- 
mous. 

11 And we will make a new beginning from this day, 
Francis." 

"If you will, my child." 

She caressed me again, after a queer little fashion of 
her own, which always made me smile, and which con- 
sisted of a series of kisses bestowed systematically on 
different parts of my face — four, I believe, being allotted 



248 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

to my forehead, two to each cheek, two to the chin, four 
to my lips, and four to my eyes. She went through this 
ceremony with a painstaking care, and then looked me 
in the face. All her love and tenderness seemed to come 
up before me in that moment and efface the past and 
its unhappiness. I held her closely to my heart, and 
her arms were around my neck. 

Will any one believe it ? My wife had scarcely left 
me five moments before the fancy came to me that I 
had shown too plainly the power she had over me. For 
months I had been schooling myself into coldness and 
indifference, and at her very first warm kiss or smile I 
was completely routed. She had vexed, and thwarted, 
and annoyed me much during those months : it would 
not do to pardon her so fully and entirely before she 
had even asked my forgiveness. I took a sudden reso- 
lution ; and, when she came back into the room, was 
buried in my papers once more. Poor child ! She had 
had one half hour's sunshine at least. 

" One moment," she said, taking the pen out of my 
hand, and holding something up over my head. " I 
have a birthday gift for you. Do you want it ?" 

" If you give it to me, certainly." 

" Then ask me for it." 

I said nothing, but took up my pen again. He:; 
countenance fell a little. 

"Would you like it?" she said, timidly. 

" There was a saint in old times," I said, quietly, 
going on with my papers, " a namesake of mine, by- the- 



LOST ALICE. 249 

way — St Francis of Sales — who was accustomed to say 
that one should never ask or refuse anything." 

"Well! But I'm not talking to Saint Francis ; I 
am talking to you. Will you have my little gift ? Say 
yes — just to please me — just to make my happy day 
still happier." 

"Don't be a child, Alice." 

"It is childish, I know ; but indulge me this once. 
It is such a little thing, and it will make me very 
happy." 

11 1 shall not refuse whatever you choose to give me. 
Only don't delay me long, for I want to go on with these 
papers." 

The next moment she threw the toy (a pretty little 
bronze inkstand, made like a Cupid, with his quiver full 
of pens) at my feet, and turned away, grieved and 
angry. I stooped to pick up the figure : it was broken 
in two. 

" Oh, you can condescend to lift it from the ground !" 
she said, sarcastically. 

11 Upon my word, Alice, you are the most un- 
reasonable of beings. However, the little god of love 
can be easily mended. " 

" Yes." 

She placed the fragments one upon the other, and 
looked at me. 

"It can be mended, but the accident must leave its 
trace, like all others. Oh ! Francis," she added, throw- 
ing herself down by my chair, and lifting my hand to hei 



250 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

lips, " why do you try me so ? Do you really love 
me?" 

44 Alice," I said, impatiently, " get up. You tire me." 

She rose and turned very pale. 

44 I will go, then. But first answer my question. 
Do you love me, Francis ?" 

I felt anger and obstinacy in my heart — nothing else. 
Was she threatening me ? 

II Did you love me when you married me, Francis?" 
44 I did. But " — 

44 But you do not love me now ?" 

44 Since you will have it," I said. 

"Go on!" 

41 1 do not love you — not as you mean/' 

There was a dead silence in the room as the lying 
words left my lips, and she grew so white, and gave me 
such a look of anguish, that I repented of my cruelty 
and forgot my anger. 

44 1 do not mean that, Alice !" I cried. "You look 
ill and pale. Believe me, I was only jesting." 

"I can bear it, Francis. There is nothing on this 
earth that can not be borne — in one way or other." 

She turned and left the room quietly and sadly. 
The sunshine faded just then, and only a white, pale 
light came through the window. I so connected it with 
her sorrow, that to this day I can never see the golden 
radiance come and go across my path without the same 
sharp, knife-like pang that I felt then, as the door closed 
behind her. 



LOST ALICE. 25i 



CHAPTEE IV. 

Alice became weaker and grew really ill. A tour 
on the Continent was strongly recommended by the doc- 
toi-s as the likeliest means of restoration. It was im- 
possible for me to go ; but some friends of ours — one 
Mr. and Mrs. Warrener, with a young daughter, were 
going to Italy for six months, and it was arranged that 
Alice should accompany them. 

They remained abroad nine months, instead of six. 

At last she returned. I came home tired enough, 
one evening, to find a letter lying on my table, inform- 
ing me that she would cross to Dover on the morrow. 
I went down to Dover to meet her. Our estrangement 
had worn deep into my heart. She had loved me once ; 
she should love me again ! 

I was worn, haggard. I took a bath and made a 
careful toilet after my hurried journey. As I was tak- 
ing my last look in the glass, the hotel-waiter came to 
tell me they had arrived. 

I followed him, more nervous than I had ever been 
before in my life. Warrener grasped my hands as I 
opened the door, and Mrs. Warrener — bless her kind 
heart ! — burst out crying. 

"Oh! my dear Frank, I am so glad to see you. 



252 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

And we have brought you your Alice home, so 
well!" 

Next moment she entered, a little King Charles's 
spaniel frisking about her feet. I had her in my arms 
at once but it was not until she kissed me that I knew 
how cold and pale she was. 

"Alice, are you ill?" I asked, holding her away 
from me, and looking into her face. 

Her eyes met mine, but their old light was quite 
gone. 

" Not in the least ill, Frank," she said, quietly. 
" But you must remember I have not seen you for nine 
months, and you startled me a little." 

My household fairy had fled, and I could only mourn 
that I should never look upon her sweet young face 
again. It was another Alice this. I had slain my own 
Alice, and nothing could reanimate her. 

I was like one in a dream all through the day. One 
morning, as I sat at my solitary breakfast — for Alice 
took that meal in her room now — the bitter sense of 
wrong and unhappiness and desertion came over me so 
strongly that I went up to her room. 

" Are you busy V 1 I asked, as she laid down her pen 
and looked around. 

" Not too busy to talk to you," she said. 
" Alice, how long are we to live this life ?" 
She changed color. 
"What life, Frank?" 

II The one we are living now. It is not the happy, 



LOST ALICE. 253 

loving life we used to live. You are not mine as 
entirely and lovingly as you once were." 

" I know it." And she sighed and looked drearily 
at me. 

' ' Why cannot the old days come back again ? If I 
made a terrible mistake, can you never forgive it ? I 
thought it was foolish for us to love each other as we 
did — at least, to show it as we did — but I have found 
now that love is earth's only true wisdom." 

She smiled, sadly. 

11 Give me back that love, Alice, which I would not 
have. Oh ! give me back the lost sunshine." 

I rose from my seat and stood beside her ; but she 
drew back and shook her head. 

II Frank, don't ask me for that." 

" I shall know how to value it now, Alice." 

" That may be ; but I have it not to give you, my 
poor Frank." 

I clasped her to my heart. The passion in that heart 
might almost have brought back life to the dead ; but she 
did not move. She was like a statue in my arms, and 
only looked at me and sighed. 

" Too late ! Too late, Frank !" 

" Will you never forgive me ?" 

" Forgive ? Do you think I have one unkind thought 
or feeling towards you, Frank ? Ah, no ! But I am 
chilled through and through. My love is dead and 
buried. Stand away from its grave, and let us meet in 
the world as we best may." 



254 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

I leaned my head upon my hands, and my tears fell, 
and I was not ashamed of them. But they seemed to 
rouse her into a kind of frenzy. 

"You?" she exclaimed, suddenly. " You, who a 
year ago sowed the seed which has borne this fruit, can 
you weep over your husbandry now ? Don't, Frank ! 
Take what I can give you — take my earnest friendship 
— and God grant we may never part, here or in hea- 
ven." 

"Ah! in heaven — if we ever get there — you will 
love me again." 

She quoted those sad words which poor St. Pierre 
uttered on his dying bed : 

" Que ferait tine ame isolee dans le ciel meme ?" 
(What would an isolated soul do even in heaven itself ?) 

And laid her hand gently on mine. 

" Heaven knows, dear Alice, that as 1 loved you 
when we first met, I loved you on that unhappy day, 
and love you still !" 

"lam glad to hear it," she said, hurriedly. " Hea- 
ven only knows what days and nights were mine at 
first. For my life had been wrapped up in yours, 
Frank, and it was terrible to separate them. I thought 
at first that I could not live. I suppose every one 
thinks so when a heavy blow falls. But strength was 
given me, and, by and by, peace. We seem like two 
grey shadows, Frank, in a silent world, and we must 
only wait God's time ; and hope that, on the other side 



LOST ALICE. 255 

of the grave, at least, this great mistake may be set 
right. Believe me, I am happy in being with you, 
Frank — happy in thinking that the same roof shelters 
us, and that we shall not part till one of us two dies." 

I opened my arms, and, of her own accord, she 
eame to my heart once more ; her arms were around 
my neck, and her head upon my shoulder, and her lips 
meeting mine. Not as they used to, yet tenderly and 
kindly. 

" We are older and wiser than we were, and sadder, 
too, dear Frank,' 7 she said, with a smile. " Yet who 
knows ? It may be that all the love has not left us yet." 

And thus that chapter of our life ended. 

We have never touched upon the subject since ; but 
I have waited calmly for years, and the same quiet light 
shines always in the eyes of Alice ; the same deep sad 
tone thrills my heart when I hear her speaking or sing- 
ing. An angel could scarcely be gentler or kinder than 
she who was once so impetuous and full of fire. She 
was unreasonable and exacting and ardent and impe- 
rious in those days, I know, and my slower nature was 
always on the strain to keep pace with hers ; but, what 
a bright, joyous, happy creature she was ! 

It would have been different but for me. Oh, you 
who read this little tale, remember in time that a kind 
word and a loving look cost little, although they do 
such great work ; and that there is no wrong so deep as 
wrong done to a loving heart. 



MADAME DE STAEL. 

Alive, thy country's highest Power 

Still honored, while he feared thy name ; 

Dead, thou hast left a princely dower 
To nations, who will guard thy fame. 

Such a proud gift as he who lives 
For human glory only knows — 

A wealth that grows by what it gives, 
Increasing when it most bestows. 

A power, that though his work be done. 

Who kindles first its beacon light, 
Widens and brightens, shining on 

Down through the ages from its height. 

Such power, such gift, such light was thine, 
woman of unequalled mind ; 

And thy great legacy has been, 
Not for thy country, but mankind. 



256 



MADAME DE STAEL. 257 

Until a proud posterity, 

Whose heart remembers to admire, 
Beats its responses back to thee, 

And kindles at thy words of fire. 

And if a name the world admires, 

And honors with but one accord, 
Can satisfy the soul's desires, 

Thou surely hast a great reward. 

Yet well might thy reward be great, 
For Justice, with her stern demands, 

For every good, or soon or late, 

Asks for her payment at our hands. 

This was the price she claimed of thee, . 
This heavy sentence, signed and sealed — 
11 Banishment, during life, to be 

Neither commuted, nor repealed." 

Friends, country, love itself, was lost, 

Leaving thee nothing but thy fame, 
Alas ! how terrible the cost, 

For the poor purchase of a name ! 

"What human soul for this would part 

With all the human soul can prize ? 
What woman, with a woman's heart, 

Would take it at the sacrifice ? 
17 



HORTENSE. 

Reared in that beautiful land where the sun 
Makes everything which he shines on glad, 

What, innocent child, couldst thou have done, 
That thine after life should be so sad ! 

What evil stars in thy sky had met, 
An influence over thy way to shed ; 

That woe's most woeful crown was set 
So heavily on thy bright young head ? 

Through all the days of a troubled life, 
Thine only portion was woe and tears, 

As a daughter, mother, friend, or wife, 
Down to the end of thy wretched years. 

Oh, brighter and better thy lot had been 

Had thy early love been its own pure guide, 

And they had been saved from a fearful sin 
Who broke thy heart in their evil pride, 

258 



HORTENSE. 259 

Early in life began thy doom, 

Of hopeless sorrow and sad disgrace ; 

As the prison shadow's awful gloom, 
Fell heavily over thy childish face. 

But bitterer, bitterer still the part 
Thy womanhood was doomed to fill ; 

Striving to hide away in thy heart 

A love which thou couldst not crush nor kill. 

And coming sadly at last to stand 

Where but happy lovers alone should wed ; 

And give to thy bridegroom only a hand, 
In place of the heart that was cold and dead. 

Wedding one whom thou couldst not love, 
Loving one whom thou couldst not wed, 

With no hope below, and no hope above, 
Mourning over a first-born dead ; 

Alas ! we can only mourn and weep 
O'er a wasted, profitless, life-time past, 

We can only hope thou art well asleep 

Where the weary rest from their cares at last. 



PHANTOMS OF FONTAINEBLEAU. 

After the destruction of the roof and part of the 

walls, the death of called me to Paris, where I 

remained some weeks, during which our work was 
suspended. I returned at the end of that time, 
however, with the necessary orders to continue the new 
theatre. I left in the afternoon train, and arrived in 
one of the ugliest winter storms to be witnessed in 
Prance. After a hearty dinner at the hotel, and sleepy 
readings, by nods, of the day's papers, I at last gathered 
up my little baggage, and wended my way to the snug- 
gery which I had appropriated in the palace as a sleep- 
ing apartment. I passed the sentries muffled in their cloaks 
and crouching closely to their boxes, and almost stopped 
in the grand court where so many events have been 
enacted. I could see the dim outline of the palace — I 
could almost recognize the circular stairway which so 
many kings, queens, courtiers, statesmen, beauties, and 
generals had traversed, and down which Napoleon came 
to embrace in a last adieu his Old Guard. As I hesita- 
ted for a second, staring into the wild night, the old 
clock above the doorway tolled out the hour of ten. It 
was indeed the voice of time, tolling its ghostly sum- 

260 



PHANTOMS OF F N T A I N E B L E A U . 261 

mons into the drowsy ear of night. I pulled my cloak 
closer about me, and sought my little room. 

To my great horror, I found, from some inter- 
ference by our workmen with the roof, the continued 
rain and snow of the past week had found their way in, 
and my room was anything but habitable. I had to 
find other quarters, and the idea of wandering through 
the vast chateau in search of a resting-place seemed as 
dreary as such a search would be through a deserted 
town at midnight. I had no help for it, however. So, 
descending to the lodge, I secured the services of old 
Marie and two men, and we set off in our search for a 
sleeping-room. I knew the most inhabitable, at least the 

most comfortable, were those of the Princess , 

known as Madame de la Pompadour's, and thither I 
conveyed my escort. Here three rooms are almost 
thrown into one, being separated at the doorways only 
by the heavy tapestry. The smaller, the bed-room, is a 
perfect gem. The floor is covered with a carpet, in 
which the foot sinks noiselessly ; the walls are hung 
with the finest satin ; the furniture, of costly woods, is 
reflected in tall mirrors, and set off by rare paintings, 
every one of which is worth a journey to look upon. 

Madame Marie soon arranged the huge bed, and 
ordered the men to light the pile of wood in the fire- 
place of the larger room. The smoke, for a while, 
rolled heavily into the apartment, but as the heat 
gathered force, took the proper direction, and in a few 
minutes I had a capital fire. Left to myself, T drew an 



262 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

arm-chair from its place, and for more than an hour sat 
looking into the sputtering fire, and listening to the 
storm rattling and beating upon the windows. Drowsy 
at last, I stole to my strange bed — so strange, that I 
soon wakened to a sense of restlessness, to me unac- 
countable. I could not get to sleep, but turned and 
turned for hours, listening to the furious storm, or look- 
ing at the fire. At last the blaze went down, and sha- 
dows, more and more gloomy, seemed to dance upon 
the goblin-tapestry in the adjoining chamber, into which 
I looked, giving a sort of life to the vivid figures. I 
could, between sleeping and waking, almost see the 
figures move. In vain I attempted to sleep ; the drowsy 
god forsook my couch the more I courted his soothing 
presence. My mind took up the many legends — the 
many cruel deeds which had once made the very stones 
quake with fright. I thought of the poor man broken 
alive upon the wheel by Louis the Just, because a 
clumsy trick, harmful to no one but himself, had failed. 
AH the sudden deaths, and mysterious disappearances, 
would throng my brain. 1 saw the jealous and infu- 
riated Christine of Sweden approach Monaldeschi, in the 
dim and ghostly " gallery of Cerfs," and demand the 
authorship of certain letters to a fair Italian. I saw 
her beckon the two assassins and the priest ; I heard 
again the supplications for life — the strange absolution ; I 
saw the murderous attack upon the unarmed man, who, 
clad in a coat of mail, resisted with his hands, until face 
and hands were cut to pieces, and, a frightful spectacle, 



PHANTOMS OF F N T A I N E BL E A U . 263 

he blindly fled from his assassins, vainly crying for 
mercy — until he fell, dying by inches. 

I could not clear my brain of this stuff, while 
the storm dashed itself against the huge windows ; the 
fire gradually burned down, until the room became 
more dim, and long shadows began to play upon the 
goblin tapestry, as if the figures, endowed with life, 
were flitting by and at each other. I would drop into 
a doze, and start out again, as if upon the watch, with 
a feverish sense of uneasiness, difficult to describe. At 
last, I became conscious of some one being in the room 
— the larger room adjoining, where now smouldered 
the fire, and into which I looked through the folding, 
draped doors. Yes, it was surely so ; some one stood 
before the fire. Strange to say, I was not startled, 
or alarmed — only influenced by a strange sense of awe. 
I could not, and yet I could, see distinctly ; the details 
were uncertain, but the general outlines were there, 
marking the fearful man — for it was indeed him. I 
saw the cocked hat — I could almost see the clear, cold 
face — the overcoat, the hands folded behind his back. 
Yes, he stood before that fire, as he had stood before 
the most fearful camp-fires of Europe. 

While I gazed, spell-bound, upon this apparition, 
another started into existence, from, I thought, the 
very tapestry at the further end of the room ; and it 
slowly, and with kingly stateliness, stalked across the 
floor a gigantic figure, dressed in the costume of another 
age ; and, as it turned its face slowly as it advanced 



264 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

towards the fireplace, I saw the straight line from the 
forehead to the end of the nose, which markes so de- 
cidedly his portrait in the Louvre. 

On he walks, turning his head with a stare of sur- 
prise, until he melts into the heavy gloom gathered at 
the further end of the apartment. And now come two 
others — the one beautiful and fair as a summer's day, 
her long, silken, auburn locks falling over, and almost 
hiding the lustrous blue eyes ; the other, dark as night. 
They, too, glide on and disappear, to be followed by 
one unlike all others. What a fierce, stern woman ! 
what a cruel, cold eye ! She, too, the mother of kings, 
passes on, glaring in hatred at the motionless figure 
before the dying fire. Hardly had the scowling appari- 
tion disappeared, than another came, and so, in con- 
trast, he seemed an angel of light ; mild, quiet, passing 
slowly on. He gazed, too, in the same direction with 
the others, but in a look rather of curious astonishment 
than scorn or hatred. His is not a martial tread or 
look, yet from the cap droops a long white feather that 
seems to beckon columns on through the black, thick 
smoke of battle, while from his breast the red blood 
welled out, soiling his white vest. 

He is gone, and after a pause appear two shadows 
— the one indistinct and uncertain, with the crown only 
clearly marked and glittering ; but his companion, tall, 
thin, is distinctly visible, with eagle eyes, and hooked 
nose and thin lips. He smiles proudly upon the form 
which has disturbed them all, and, as he passes on, 



PHANTOMS OF FONTAINEBLEAU 26<3 

a smile of recognition seems to play about his lips. 
They, too, are gone ; and now they come, not one, nor 
two, but crowds of shadowy, kingly things, flitting by 
like figures in a distempered dream. They are gone ; 
and, while the wind seems breathing a funereal dirge, 
appears an old, old man, bent with age, who totters by, 
and, without turning or exhibiting any emotion other 
than grief, disappears — the last of a royal line. There 
is a long pause — still the form before the dying fire 
stands motionless. Will there be another ? I strain my 
eyes to see. The fire burns lower and lower ; while 
the gloom deepens, the storm grows loud apace, and 
seems to change into the echoing roar of cannon and 
wild cries, as if a nation were gathering into strife ; 
and now a terrific explosion, and FontainebLeau seems 
falling about me in ruins. I involuntarily close my 
eyes, and open them to find the cold, grey light of a 
winter's dawn stealing into the room. My dream was 
ended ; the spectres had fled at the ghost's summons j 
for, 

" The sentinel cock, shrill chanticleer, 
Had wound his bngle horn, 
And told the early villager 
The coming of the morn." 



M'LLE. LENORMAND. 



What strange power, to us unknown, 
O'er her early years was thrown, 
That, within the convent's cell, 
She should study charm and spell, 
To discern the things that lie 
Hidden from our mortal eye — 
Wisely from us still concealed 
Till their time to be revealed ? 



By what witchery did she bring 
Statesmen, soldier, priest, and king, 
In their hour of gloom or hope, 
To consult her horoscope — 
Thus to learn the good or ill 
Waiting in their future still ? 
How could she assign their parts 
By her dark forbidden arts ? 



ii 







m'lle lenormand. 267 

Haply, she could not discern 

More than they who came to learn, 

Could not understand or tell 

What her power, or whence her spell ; 

Haply, she who spake, believed, 

If deceiving, still deceived ; 

And in her we only find, 

That the blind can lead the blind. 



For it may be, He whose power 
Shuts from us the future hour, 
Keeping e'en from angels' ken 
What he hath prepared for men ; 
When we seek in ways forbid 
For the knowledge he has hid, 
Leaves us to believe a lie, 
And to be destroyed thereby. 



For we gain no wisdom higher 
Than the wisdom we desire, 
Never loud voice from the sky 
Answers to a feeble cry ; 
Only does the Father speak 
To the waiting souls that seek 
Only they his truth have heard 
Who have sought it in his word. 



268 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

And but this we learn of thee, 

Child of mournful destiny : 

Knowledge gained, where faith is lost, 

Is not worth the fearful cost. 

God saith, " Every child who pleads, 

Shall have answer to his needs ; 

Trust the future unto me, 

As thy day, thy strength shall be." 



MADAME JEROME BONAPARTE. 

(MISS PATTERSON.) 

No fear of future ill we trace, 
No mark of sorrow, or of age — 

But a most fair and girlish face 

Looks on us from the pictured page ; 

Her hopeful face, who came to stand 

Beside the altar, long ago, 
And give her willing heart and hand 

For life, with all its weal or woe ; 

Her happy face, who could not see, 
In that sweet triumph of her power, 

How short her dream of bliss would be, 
How fearful its awakening hour ! 

She could not see that gloom begin, 

Which o'er her morning sky was thrown, 

Nor the long weary years wherein 
She should go down life's vale alone. 



Ml 



270 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

Ah ! well for us, we are forbid 
To see what path before us lies — 

Ah ! wisely hath our Father hid 
The future from his children's eyes. 

For though the human heart can bear, 

Daily, its daily weight of woe, 
Yet, if revealed at once, despair 

Would break it with a single blow. 

And God most righteously bestows 
Our lots, though we be sad, or blest ; 

Our human wisdom only knows, 

What seems, and not what is, the best. 

Our needs by Him are understood, 
His guardian love no child forsakes — 

He gives us compensating good 
For every blessing which he takes. 

So it may be, that we are cared 

For most, in darkest hours of gloom — 

And, by our very sorrows, spared 

From that which might have been our doom. 






THE LAST PICTURE 



*' The spider's most attenuated thread 
Is cord, is cable when compared with that 
On which, at times, man's destiny depends." 



"The loveliest thing in life," says a gifted author, " is 
the mind of a young child." The most sensitive thing, 
he might have added, is the heart of a young artist. 
Hiding in his bosom a veiled and unspeakable beauty, 
the inspired neophyte shrinks from contact with the 
actual, to lose himself in delicious reveries of an ideal 
world. In those enchanted regions, the great and pow- 
erful of the earth ; the warrior-statesmen of the Eliza- 
bethan era ; the steel-clad warriors of the mediaeval 
ages ; gorgeous cathedrals, and the luxuriant pomp 
of prelates, who had princes for their vassals ; courts 
of fabled and forgotten kings ; and in the deepening 
gloom of antiquity, the nude Briton and the painted 
Pict pass before his enraptured eyes. Women, beauti- 
ful creations ! warm with breathing life, yet spiritual as 
angels, hover around him ; Elysian landscapes are in the 
distance ; but ever arresting his steps — cold and spec- 

271 



272 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

tral in his path — stretches forth the rude hand of 
Reality. Is it surprising that the petty miseries of life 
weigh down his spirit ? Yet the trembling magnet does 
not seek the north with more unerring fidelity than that 
11 soft, sentient thing," the artist's heart, still directs 
itself amid every calamity, and in every situation, 
towards its cynosure — perfection of the beautiful. The 
law which guides the planets attracts the one ; the other 
is influenced by the divine mystery which called the 
universe itself into being ; that sole attribute of genius 
— creation. 

Few artists escape those minor evils which are 
almost a necessary consequence in an exquisitely sym- 
pathetic organization. Fortunately, these are but tran- 
sient, often requisite, bringing forth hidden faculties and 
deeper feelings, which else might have lain dormant. 
But iterated disappointments will wear even into a soul 
of iron ; sadly I write it, there have been such instances ; 
but a few years have elapsed since the death of the la- 
mented Haydon ; and later, one nearer and dearer, this 
side the Atlantic, was called to an untimely grave. 

Not less true and touching is the tale I have to tell, 
though it relates to an earlier period : 

" its only charm, in sooth, 



If any, will he sad and simple truth." 

In one of those little villages in the north of Eng- 
land which still preserve the antiquated customs and 
pastimes of past times, there lived, about a century ago, 



THE LAST PICTURE. 273 

a young artist by the name of Stanfield. A small free- 
hold estate barely sufficed to support himself and his 
aged grandmother. They resided in a cottage entirely 
by themselves, and as he was an orphan and an only 
child, I need not say how dear he was to that poor old 
heart. The border ballads she would sit crooning to 
him long winter nights had been as eloquent to him as 
a mythology, and many a "Douglass and Percie " — 
many an exploit of " Jonnie Armstrong," tl Laidlaw," 
and " Elliott/' adorned the walls of the cottage, de- 
picted, it is true, with rude materials and implements, 
but sufficiently striking to excite the admiration of the 
villagers, who wondered, not so much at the manner in 
which the sketches were executed, as at the fact that 
such things could be done at all. A beautiful rural 
landscape surrounded their home ; and a view of the 
Solway, the Irish sea, and the distant coast of Scotland, 
doubtless had its effect upon the mind of the young 
painter. Many were the gossipings, during his absence 
from the cottage, over these early productions of his 
pencil, and dear to his aged grandmother the rude 
praises bestowed upon them by her rustic neighbors. 

At last the squire called upon him. The meeting 
was delightful to both. The enthusiasm and innate re- 
finement of the young man — the delicate taste, simpli- 
city, and manly benevolence of the squire, were mu- 
tually attractive. A commission to paint a picture was 
given to Stanfield, and a large apartment in the Manor 
Hall appropriated to his use. You may be sure that he 

18 



274 JOSEPHINE GALLERf. 

was untiring in his efforts now. Room to paint — mate- 
rials to use — studies on every side — patronage to re- 
ward — happy artist ! Nor was the want of sweet com- 
panionship felt by him. At times, a lovely face startled 
him at his doorway. Sometimes music, "both of instru- 
ment and singing," floated up the broad staircase. 
Sometimes he found a chance handful of flowers resting 
upon his palette. A golden-haired, blue-eyed vision 
haunted his dreams, waking or sleeping. Happy, happy 
artist ! The squire had an only daughter. Her name was 
Blanche. The picture was at last completed. 

It happened the great Sir Joshua Reynolds at this 
time paid the squire a visit. Ah ! that young heart 
throbbed then, not less with dread than joy. No doubt, 
it was a crude production, that picture, but youth, with 
all its misgivings, is full of hope, and the young artist, 
in spite of the wise admonitions of his patron, insisted 
upon concealing himself behind the canvas, that he 
might hear the candid opinion of the great painter. It 
is scarcely necessary to refer to the fact, that Sir Joshua 
was deaf, and his voice, in consequence, had that sharp- 
ness usual in persons so affected. The expected duy 
arrived. The squire and his guests stood before the 
picture. A sweet voice, like a thread of gold, some- 
times mingled with the praises of the rest. At last, Sir 
Joshua spoke. Stanfield listened intently. He heard his 
picture condemned ! Still he listened, his heart beating 
against his side almost audibly ; there might be some re- 
deeming points ? Like an inexorable judge, the old 



THE LAST PICTURE. 275 

painter heaped objection upon objection, and that too 
in tones, it seemed, of peculiar asperity. Poor Stanfield 
felt as if the icy hand of death were laid upon his 
heart, and then, with a sickening shudder, fell senseless 
upon the floor. 

They raised him — he recovered, was restored to life ; 
but what was life to him ? 

From that time, he drooped daily. At last his kind 
patron sent him to Rome. There, amid the eternal 
monuments of art, avoiding all companions, immured 
in his little studio, he busied himself steadily, but fee- 
bly, with a work which proved to be his last. 

It represented a precipitous cliff to the brink of 
which a little child had crept. One tiny hand stretched 
out over the abyss, and its baby face was turned, with a 
smile, towards its mother, from whose arms it had evi- 
dently just escaped. That playful look was a challenge 
for her to advance, and she, poor mother, with that 
deep, dumb despair in her face, saw the heedless inno- 
cent just poised upon the brink, beyond her reach, and 
knew that if she moved towards it a single step, it too 
would move, to certain death. But with heaven-taught 
instinct, she had torn the drapery from her breast, and 
exposed the sweet fountain of life to her infant. Spite 
of its peril you felt it would be saved. 

Such was the picture. Day after day, when the 
artists, his friends, gathered at their customary meals, 
his poor, pale face was seen among them, listless, with- 
out a smile, and seemingly wistful of the end, when he 



276 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

might retire again to his secluded studio. One day he 
was missing. The second came, but he came not. The 
third arrived — still absent. A presentiment of his fate 
seemed to have infused itself in every mind. They went 
to his room. There, seated in a chair before his unfin- 
ished picture they found him — dead — his pencil in his 
hand. 



GRACE INGERSOLL. 

Where God placeth any creature, 
Where he planteth any seed, 

Each may find what best will answer 
True development and need. 

There are blossoms on the mountains, 

Braving even Alpine snow, 
That would perish if transplanted 

To the valleys down below. 

On our northern hills are roses, 
Never fearing winter's breath, 

That the kisses of the south-wind 
Would but wither into death. 

True, the plant awhile may flourish, 
Forced some foreign bower to grace, 

But its root would strike down deeper 
In its native soil and place. 



277 



278 



JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

Shut out from the earth's green places, 
Is the wild bird's music best ? 

Does its voice not sound the sweetest 
Singing nearest to its nest ? 

And thou wert like bird or blossom, 
Daughter of a northern race — 

Thou couldst neither sing nor florish, 
Taken from thy native place. 

Going straight to woman's duties, 
Prom thy childish joys and sports, 

From the free air of the mountains, 
To the atmosphere of courts, 

Can we marvel if the footstep, 
Which trod lightly on the plain, 

Should be hindered in its movement 
By the drapery of the train ? 

Can we marvel, when we see her 
Borne from home and friends away, 

If her voice went out in silence, 
And her beauty to decay ? 

No, we marvel not, yet mourn thee, 

Lying in thy foreign tomb, 
Fairest flower of all New England, 

This should not have been thy doom ! 



MADAME REGNAULT. 

I think the humblest peasant girl, 

Roaming the valleys free, 
If loved and cherished in her home, 

Could never envy thee ; 
But rather weep above thy fate — 
So proud, and yet so desolate. 

Midst all the ladies of the court 

Still wert thou most forlorn, 
E'en for thy very beauty's sake 

A target for their scorn ; 
Envy, and bitter rivalry, 
Drove from their hearts all love for thee. 

And e'en the Monarch, whom through life 

Thou didst revere and trust, 
He, to thy worth and loveliness, 

Was cruel and unjust ; 
O'er him, the noblest woman's power 
Could last but for an idle hour. 

279 



280 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

The weak were objects of his scorn, 

The wise, his fear and dread ; 
He heaped with shame, from mere caprice, ' 

The unoffending head. 
And they who dared to brave his wrath 
"Were swept unpitied from his path. 

Though hopes, or even hearts must break, 

He ruled unthwarted still, 
Friends, sisters, even his wife at last, 

He sacrificed at will ; 
Was retribution for the past 
That none were near him at the last ? 

woe ! to thee, fair lady, woe, 

That such fidelity 
As thine was poured on one who gave 

So little back to thee ; 
Woe, that thou shouldst have bowed thy head 
For shame, thou hadst not merited. 

And woe, for him who faltered not 

For woman's suffering ; 
Must there not come to him at last 

A fearful reckoning ? 
When all who suffered for his sake 
Are heard, what answer can he make ? 



GROWING OLD 



BY MISS MULOCK. 

" * Do ye think of the days that are gone, Jeanie, 
As ye sit by your fire at night ? 
Do ye wish that the morn would bring back the time, 

When your heart and your step were so light ?' 
* I think of the days that are gone, Eobin, 

And of all that I joyed in then; 
But the brightest that ever arose on me, 
I have never wished back again.' " 

Growing old ! A time we talk of, and jest or moral- 
ize over, but find almost impossible to realize — at least 
to ourselves. In others, we can see its approach 
clearer : yet even then we are slow to recognize it. 
"What, Miss So-and-so looking old, did you say? 
Impossible ! she is quite a young person : only a year 
older than I — and that would make her just . . . . 
Bless me ! I am forgetting how time goes on. Yes," — 
with a faint deprecation which truth forbids you to con- 
tradict, and politeness to notice — " I suppose we are 
neither of us so young as we used to be." 



282 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

Without doubt, it is a trying crisis in a woman's life 
— a single woman particularly — when she begins to sus- 
pect she is " not so young as she used to be ;" that, 
after crying " Wolf' 7 ever since the respectable maturity 
of seventeen — as some young ladies are fond of doing, 
to the extreme amusement of their friends — the grim 
wolf, old age, is actually showing his teeth in the dis- 
tance ; and no courteous blindness on the part of these 
said friends, no alarmed indifference on her own, can 
neutralize the fact that he is, if still far off, in sight. And, 
however charmingly poetical he may appear to sweet 
fourteen- and-a-half, who writes melancholy verses about 
1 1 wish I were again a child," or merry three-and- 
twenty, who preserves in silver paper " my first grey 
hair," old age, viewed as a near approaching reality, is 
— quite another thing. 

To feel that you have had your fair half at least of 
the ordinary term of years allotted to mortals ; that 
you have no right to expect to be any handsomer, or 
stronger, or happier than you are now ; that you have 
climbed to the summit of life, whence the next step 
must necessarily be decadence ; ay, though you do not 
feel it, though the air may be as fresh, and the view as 
grand — still, you know that it is so. Slower or faster, 
you are going down hill. To those who go "hand-in- 
hand," 

" And sleep thegither at the foot," 

it may be a safer and sweeter descent ; but I am writing 
for those who have to make the descent alone. 



GROWING OLD. 283 

It is not a pleasant descent at the beginning. When 
you find at parties that you are not asked to dance as 
much as formerly, and your partners are chiefly stout, 
middle-aged gentlemen, and slim lads, who blush terri- 
bly and require a great deal of drawing out ; when you 
are " dear"-ed and patronized by stylish young chits, 
who were in their cradles when you were a grown 
woman ; or when some boy, who was your plaything in 
petticoats, has the impertinence to look over your head, 
bearded and grand, or even to consult you on his love- 
affairs ; when you find your acquaintance delicately 
abstaining from the term " old maid," in your presence, 
or immediately qualifying it by an eager panegyric on 
the solitary sisterhood ; when servants address you as 
" Ma'am," instead of " Miss ;" and if you are at all 
stout and comfortable-looking, strange shopkeepers per- 
sist in making out your bills to " Mrs. Blank," and 
pressing upon your notice toys and perambulators. 

Rather trying, too, when, in speaking of yourself as 
a " girl " — which, from long habit, you unwittingly do — 
you detect a covert smile on the face of your interlocu- 
tor ; or, led by chance excitement to deport yourself in 
an ultra-youthful manner, some instinct warns you that 
you are making yourself ridiculous. Or catching in 
some strange looking-glass the face that you are too 
familiar with to notice much, ordinarily, you suddenly 
become aware that it is not a young face ; that it will 
never be a young face again ; that it will gradually alter 
and alter, until the known face of your girlhood, 



284 JOSEPHINE GALLERY. 

whether plain or pretty, loved or disliked, admired 01 
despised, will have altogether vanished — nay, is van- 
ished : look as you will, you cannot see it any more. 

There is no denying the fact, and it ought to silence 
many an ill-natured remark upon those unlucky ones 
who insist on remaining " young ladies of a certain age," 
—that with most people the passing from maturity to 
middle age is so gradual, as to be almost imperceptible 
to the individual concerned. It is very difficult for a 
woman to recognize that she is growing old ; and to 
many — nay, to all more or less — this recognition can- 
not but be fraught with considerable pain. Even the 
most frivolous are somewhat to be pitied, when, not con- 
ducting themselves as passties, because they really do not 
think it, they expose themselves to all manner of mis- 
constructions by still determinedly grasping that fair 
sceptre of youth, which they never suspect is now the 
merest "rag of sovereignty' 7 — sovereignty deposed. 

Nor can the most sensible woman fairly put aside 
her youth, with all it has enjoyed, or lost, or missed ; 
its hopes and interests, omissions and commissions, 
doings and sufferings ; satisfied that it is henceforth to 
be considered as a thing gone by— without a momentary 
spasm of the heart. Young people forget this as com- 
pletely as they forget that they themselves may one day 
experience the same, or they would not be so ready tc 
laugh at even the foolishest of those foolish old virgins 
who deems herself juvenile long after everybody else 
has ceased to share in the pleasing delusion, and thereby 



GROWING OLD. 285 

makes both useless and ridiculous that season of early 
autumn which ought to be the most peaceful, abundant, 
safe, and sacred time in a woman's whole existence. 
They would not, with the proverbial harsh judgment of 
youth, scorn so cruelly those poor little absurdities, of 
which the unlucky person who indulges therein is pro- 
bably quite unaware — merely dresses as she has always 
done, and carries on the harmless coquetries and minau- 
deries of her teens, unconscious how exceedingly ludi- 
crous they appear in a lady of — say forty ! Yet in this 
sort of exhibition, which society too often sees and 
enjoys, any honest heart cannot but often feel, that of 
all the actors engaged in it the one who plays the least 
objectionable and disgraceful part is she who only makes 
a fool of herself. 

Alas ! why should she do it ? Why cling so des- 
perately to the youth that will not stay? and which, 
after all, is not such a very precious or even a happy 
thing. Why give herself such a world of trouble to 
deny or conceal her exact age, when half her acquain- 
tance must either know it or guess it, or be supremely 
indifferent about it? Why appear dressed — undressed, 
cynics would say — after the pattern of her niece, the 
belle of the ball ; annoying the eye with beauty either 
half withered or long overblown, and which in its prime 
would have been all the lovelier for more conceal- 
ment ? 



M'LLE GEORGES. 

Pleasant hopes at life's bright sum-is* 
Courage for its noonday toil, 

And calm quiet at its sunset, 
Hushing all the long turmoil. 

These the blessings which our Father 
Sends us in our earthly home — 

Making kind and good provision 
For all seasons as they come — 

Giving strength for the performance 
Of each duty which life brings — 

Giving faith, whereby securely 
Wp take hold on heavenly things 

And each day that we are marking 
By good thought, or better deed 

Makes its own best preparation 
For the day that shall succeed. 



286 



m'lLE GEORGES. 287 

Nothing that is good can perish, 

Hope, or virtue, love, or truth ; 
If we rightly live the present, 

We shall not regret our youth. 

For if we are only adding 

Truest wisdom to our store, 
Every day we live is better 

Than the day that went before. 

Child of genius, wit, and beauty, 

Bright thy day at morning rose ; 
Hast thou gained no hope or memory 

That can beautify its close ? 

Ah ! life's vanities and follies 

Made thy pleasures in the past — 
And vain effort to recall them 

Is thy solace at the last. 

Better hadst thou spent in duty 

Years but wasted for renown, 
Then tuy white hairs should adorn thee 

And their glory be thy crown ! 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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